Amusing Ourselves To Death Opportunity

Chapter 1: “Speech, of course, is the primal and indispensable medium” (pg 9).
        I agree with Postman that people can not live without some sort of speech to communicate with. People can not communicate effectively with each other in less they use speech. I had a experience with no speech when we had the day of using a white broad only being able to draw on it. It was hard and confusing for me and people who did not know why I was not talking. Speech will never be replaced and will always be needed by the people to communicate effectively and for other people to understand.

Chapter 2: “I am arguing that a television-based epistemology pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape, not that it pollutes everything” (pg 28).
          I agree with Postman on this too. Television does affect the way we communicate with people and how we interact with them. Television affects how we act and what we do in our daily lives. If I am watching TV I am more likely to ignore what people are saying around me or not do what I am suppose to be doing at that point in time. Also when people watch TV it distracts them and they can miss something important. When people watch TV they are in basically a trance and do not know what is going on around them.

Chapter 3: “One sometimes hears it said, for example, that there is more printed matter available today than ever before, which is undoubtedly true”(pg 41).        
        I agree with him on this, there are books everywhere for us to read. This connects into his book because even though we have some many choices of books to read we rather watch TV or be on our computers. This connects to almost every teenager they rather watch TV or be on face book than read a book and do something educational. That does count for me sometimes but I do read books instead of watching TV. Even though we have that available to us we take it for granted and watch TV or are on our electronics.

Chapter 4: “Is there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of talk? Or five? Of three? Especially without pictures of any kind? Second there audiences must have had an equally extraordinary capacity to comprehend lengthy and complex sentences aurally” (pg 45).
         I agree with him on this too, he is not trying to offend any Americans by saying that he is just stating the truth. No one in our time period could sit there for that long and listen to a speech when kids can barely sit still for a forty-five minutes class period or even a twenty minute chapel. Also usually we need to have the words in front of us to understand something complex that needs thought not have it read to us and understand it.

Chapter 5: “But most of our daily news is inert consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action” (pg 68).
        I disagree with him on this point, because not everything in the news is meaning less and will not cause people to take action and help out. Yes, some stuff on the news is pointless and should just be ignored and not put on the news in the first place. Hurricane Katrina is an example of the news not just informing us of something pointless. When people were informed of what had happened a lot of them started to find ways to help the people who had lost everything and needed to rebuild their lives. That just shows that the news is not all pointless information.

Chapter 6: “But what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience” (pg 87).
         I agree with him television has been turned into a natural occurrence not just their for entertainment a few times a week or when the weather is bad. We turn to TV for everything now, it’s not just there in case people need it. An example would be when people are at home it’s a sunny warm day on summer vacation and you have all these kids sitting inside rather than going out and exercising and having fun. Also that when we watch certain shows we think we have to be like the actors and actresses and do what they do to be considered cool and popular. It is natural for us to turn to TV and sort of mimic what they do.

Chapter 7: “For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequence, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment” (pg 100).
         I disagree, yes some news can be just for entertainment, but most news is there to inform us of what if going on in the world. The news can tell us information we do not need to know, but most of it is informing us of what is going on even if it does not involve us directly. An example would be when I some time watch the news they talk about what is happening in our state, the country or even in other counties. They informed us about what happened with Hurricane Katrina and we were able to go and help them out in many way possible. All the news is not just entertainment.

Chapter 8: “I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether” (pg 121).            
        I agree with him on this. When you put something as serious as people’s religions and beliefs on TV and they try to make it seem like they are serious, but really are making it amusing so people watch. They think they are doing a good thing by doing that and getting other people to hear the Word of God. They are not I have seen one of those shows on TV and all they really care about is getting ratings to stay on the air. They do not mention a lot about God and our salvation they just preach something that they think people will relate to and help them out in the end.

Chapter 9: “Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products” (pg 128).
         I agree most commercials are not about the product and the character of the product, but about the character of the people they are trying to sell the product too. If a someone is watching MTV it is going to try to sell you products a teen would want like energy drinks, clothes from popular stores or even songs of certain artists. People do not care if the product is over priced and is actually a good one to begin with, but when they see another teen on a commercial with it they will most likely want it too.

Chapter 10:  “Every television program must be a complete package in itself. No previous knowledge is to be required. There must not be even a hint that learning is hierarchical, that it is and edifice constructed on a foundation. The learner must be allowed to enter at any point without prejudice” (pg 147).      
        I disagree with him on this, some TV shows maybe like that but not all of them are that bad. Shows the NCIS, Law and Order, CSI, Lost, and even House, are shows when you need some previous knowledge to understand what is going on during that episode. People do not need a lot of knowledge but they need some to understand the concept of the episode or even the all the seasons. I watch shows where if you miss and episode you will be confused and lost, whereas some shows I watch you can miss five or six and still know what it going on. Not all shows are pointless and have no plot to them.

Amusing Ourselves To Death Conclusion

The distinction he makes in the last chapter is the difference between laughing and thinking. He is telling us that the danger of the age of television is that we do not why we are laughing anymore, and we do not understand why we have stopped thinking. This distinction matters because it is the whole reason of the book, it shows us the true decline in the world caused by the age of television. That if we do not do anything about it we will keep being entertained by the mindless shows we watch and sooner or later lose the ability altogether to think for ourselves. In the end Postman is saying all these mindless entertaining shows will be funny to us know but they will control the way we think if we keep watching them.

A Day Without Talking

It was so hard to go a whole school day without talking and having everyone look at me weird when I tried to draw a picture to explain what I was trying to say. A interesting experience I had with not being able to talk on Friday was lunch. It was so hard to sit there and have all my friends around  talking and all I could do was sit there and listen to the conversations. I never realized how much I relayed on talking during lunch or in the halls between classes until Friday.  All my friends knew I couldn't talk all day but it was still frustrating when they would forget then start talking to me and all I wanted to do was answer but couldn't. No talking for a day was very hard and people take stuff the wrong way when you can't talk and answer their questions or have a conversation with them.

Postmans Speech

Neil Postman mentions many famous quotes from people in his speech one that really sticks out was the one Henry David Thoreau's that says "All inventions are an improved way to means of an unimproved end." That is so true about our society today that everything we do is always being improved yet we are never truly happy with what we have. We always want it bigger and better in the end. As he said in the books we started off with smoke signals as the first way of communication and slowly built on that and have a whole new way in the 21th Century of communication such as texting, emails and instant messaging. We started of so simple and yet now we think we have it so easy yet it is probably just going to hurt us in the end. As he says in the video we are going to turn into "pets of our computers" from not communicating directly with people around us. He says that we are going to start talking to inantimate objects of we keep up with the texting people when we are in the same house let alone in the same room. Lastly he is basically saying that their are many different mediums of communication and we are just taking the easy way out and it is going to hurt us in the end that we need to talk to people face to face more often then texting them.

Also he talks about the cloning of animals that has happened and the cloning of humans that they want to try to help improve our lives. The cloning is basically the scientists messing with the way God made us and everyone else having us rely on science and technology to make us look better or save our lives. We are going to rely on that colon to save us if we need a new heart or lung to save us. He says in the book that our 27th President William Taft how was bigger than most presidents today would not make it if he ran into today's world because he does not fit the image we have created. That people do not want to listen to a fat president talk that they want a some what good looking one. We have created this image in society that if your basically not perfect looking you can not be on TV or in magazines. The fact that we have some many shows based around plastic surgery today is supporting that we may need colons someday for everyone because they could improve our lives when we need them. All this technology is doing is taking away from our lives and we are not improving ourselves or society we are just taking away from how God made us and they way he wanted us to be in our lives.

Civility Not Censorship

Chavez's intent with the first six words of her column was to argue that the words we use need to have a certain civility behind them when we are in a public setting. She was telling us that for the rest of her column she would be addressing the civility of certain words and when it is right to us them and when it is not.
Chavez's decides to use the word "bellicose" because politicians have been using bellicose metaphors for hundreds of years. The word bellicose literally means aggressively hostile, and people read into the meaning and take what the politicians are saying to the heart and not as them just expressing the tensions of the political world verbally.
Chavez is trying to convince the reader that yes some word are derogatory and should not be used in some cases, but sometimes they need to be used to get the point across in a stronger more impacting way. If people use the word in the right way in public the word will not be taken the wrong way. The best point would be when she talks about "Huckleberry Finn" and how they should not change the words because it changes the impact of the story on the students that read it.
I agree with Chavez that we should not keep certain words out of our language just because some people read into them and take them the wrong way as long as we say them with civility and have the right meaning behind the words we should be allowed to use them. Also if the word has more of a impact on the story or the point someone is trying to make they should be able to us it. Basically if the word has a impact it should be allowed to be used because in the future its just going to lead to ignorance and less knowledge about subjects when they deny us from using our creativity in getting a point across. People not being able to use certain words is just going to hurt everyone in the end not help.

Conserve, reuse, recycle.

"Have you figured out yet that I'm going as a cadaver, an anatomical gift?"

Semrau intentionally leaves the information about to help get the reader interested in the article and to want to keep reading. He gets the readers attention by not telling them what he is talking about right away and waiting till almost the end so the reader is hooked and want to know what kind of going green he is talking about. Him doing that helps people see that you can go green in other ways and helps the intent of the essay a lot. The intent of the essay is that he wants people to see going green as not just recycling paper and bottles but as he puts it “reusing” your body and probably helping out other people.

The article was effective it kept my attention because it was different and made you wonder what he is getting at till you get to that sentence and finally understand that he wants to reuse his body. If he would of said that at the beginning they gone through with the rest of what he said he would lost peoples attention. This way though he keep their attention through the whole article and he is able to get people to think about “conserve, reuse, recycle” in a different way.

Savior of the Nations, Come.

The main message of hymn Savior of the Nations Come is that Jesus came to this world to die and be raised for the dead for us. Luther is trying to show us that God chose everything he did for a reason and that it all goes back to Jesus dying for us. He is trying to get across that the biggest sacrifice anyone could do was Jesus giving up his life for the world and we should praise and honor him. He wants us not to just pray and give thanks every once in awhile but actually see what Jesus did to us and understand why and how he came to this world. The language tool that he uses is diction, without diction the hymn would still have the same meaning, but it would not be as powerful. Words such as disowned and enthroned are more powerful than words like reject or install. Yes they still get the point across Jesus was rejected by the world and still to be installed in heaven with God but it does not have as much as an impact and is sort of just looked over and not thought about without those words.