Revised Paragraphs

Chat rooms can provide a learning environment outside of the classroom. They are effective resources because they have even allowed me to converse with other members of my Biology class to discuss lectures and labs. A lot of classes around campus have the chat rooms set up privately for only the students registered in that class. Private chats also can be set up if that interests the individual using the room. The chat room is a good resource to use inside and outside of the classroom.

Dogs are clearly a more suitable and effective alternative to weapons. Dogs served as the preferred alternative to excessive force around housing developments off campus for students attending the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA, canines were first introduced in 1979 to aid University Officers in protecting the safety of students from nearby gangs. The gangs relocated due to the use of canines (Freidman 21). Although suspects have claimed to be badly bitten, these cases are extremely rare compared to many documented good deeds and rescues involving human lives performed by police canines.

Baseball's drug policy happened in 2004, long before anybody in the previous 100 plus years of baseball could have been prevented from taking these steroids and other drugs. *With this type of instability in the baseball drug program, why start now? @[Sure], I am for equality amongst all of baseball's players, @[but] preventing something that is impossible to prevent because of the excessive amounts of baseball players should not even be tried. It is the containment of this that should be attempted. If a person is found taking steroids, punish him. @[But] why should we start marking asterisks when several generations of baseball players have gone by unnoticed. Many baseball records have been set without being tested for steroids. To start now would be ludicrous. It is not the fairness of the morality of the situation, @[but] the fairness of the overall situation.

*In order to make this more of a policy, they need to just be more lenient on the use of steroids and not have the media blast on everybody who uses them. Drug testing was effective as of 2004, and steroids were available long before that. That means that everybody before then had the chance to use steroids and no one cared. If they get caught then they get caught, dont make a public scene about it. All records should go asterisk free because theyre now just keying in on people when baseball has been around for more than 100 years.
“This exercise did not really do much to help me. I can definitely see the use for it, but I believe this is something I cannot see myself doing on my own time to help me out for this paper. All of my sentences seemed to be in proper structure. It could help in the future however.

As a Carolina Gamecock, I feel that the tradition of burning the tiger was a great tradition to skip this year. I feel that this year is a year where Clemson and USC should be in a way "United" despite being rivals. The fire that happened earlier involving both of our school's students is why this should happen. I believe that the reason we should skip this tradition for the year is because fire is the reason we had a lot of students in mourning. The use of fire in this tradition was simply too soon because people are still feeling the effects of this tragedy. As far as policy goes, I think this tradition should not change in the following years. I don't believe it is what these students would have wanted. This is just a great tradition to skip for the year because it shows respect for them.

Jamie Lincoln Kitman discusses the use of hybrid cars. He apparently knows a lot on the subject since he is a car tester and bureau chief for Automobile Magazine. With this knowledge, he uses the facts in order to get his point across. He is obviously against the use of hybrid cars. He compares the use of them to fat free desserts, which "Sound healthy but can still make you fat." He bases his argument on the negatives of hybrid car use. Such negatives include the "Extra weight, complexity, and expense." Hybrid's cost an extra $6,000 in order to make. This being said, it takes a while in order for money to be saved from extra gas use. He also mentions how extra weight is added onto the car, which robs gas mileage, and that the battery robs passengers space and cargo. Also, the battery, when not recycled properly, can be a large environmental hazard.

Considering the other side, Kitman talks about how hybrid taxis and buses would make a lot of sense. However, no one has ever considered it, and people will always be oblivious to the negatives of hybrid cars just because they're hybrid cars. He also says that people who spend the majority of their time on city streets will find a use for hybrid cars, because that is where those cars are most efficient.

Patrick Moore is the co-founder of GreenPeace. Despite this, he goes against the reason that GreenPeace was founded; getting rid of the use of nuclear energy. He calls nuclear energy the only source that can save the world from a catastrophic climate change. It is also less expensive than most other energy sources like natural gas and hydroelectric. These prices will also drop in the future. Although nuclear plants aren't safe, there are far more dangerous. In fact, last year, 56 deaths were accounted to a reactor that blew up. Over 5,000 people die yearly due to coal mining accidents.

Moore thinks that nuclear weapons should have no destructive ends and should be used for environmental purposes.. There are too many benefits for the use of nuclear plants. The current 103 nuclear plants avoid the release of 700 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to 100 million automobiles.

Kluger and Lindzen discuss the effects of global warming on our society. The first thing that strikes my mind when talking about these two articles is how Lindzen refers to the study of global warming as a "Junk science." The fact that he refers to global warming as that shows enough to me that he doesn't believe in this subject. He claims the climate change to be due to "Alarmism."

This makes me believe that Kluger is the more persuasive one in the duo of global warming essays. He puts alot of the blame on carbon dioxide, saying that CO2 concentration was risen to a point where 19 of the hottest years on record were in the 1980s or later. Take that plus the addition of a non-biased view point, and there is a lot of credibility to give to him. I believe the blame he places on natural disasters is very minimal, saying that it is just natural, that they always will attack, but the severity of them will be caused due to the problem of global warming.

Lindzen seems to place some blame on carbon dioxide, saying that the contraction of upper-level cirrus clouds "increased with temperature" which decreased the response to the increasing levels of carbon dioxide. However, Kluger seems to be the persuasive one because Lindzen has a sense of bias in his viewpoint. He does not seem to attracted to the idea of global warming, but still thinks that something is causing it. Kluger, on the other hand, gives solid view points to why this is happening and does not have a bias giving him more credibility.

Blog#2

There are three perspectives to take in the performance enhancing drugs scandal in baseball. The baseball fans who are disgusted, those who are entertained, and the TV stations who are cashing in on the fans who are entertained. Regardless, all three have their legitimate reasons to have their own stances. With the stances given, I believe that the fans who are entertained have a reason to be excited due to the homerun surge in baseball.

Baseball's drug policy happened in 2004, long before anybody in the previous 100 plus years of baseball could have been prevented from taking these steroids and other drugs. With this type of instability in the baseball drug program, why start now? Sure, I am for equality amongst all of baseball's players, but preventing something that is impossible to prevent because of the excessive amounts of baseball players should not even be tried, but the containment should be attempted. If a person is found taking steroids, punish him. But why should we start marking asterisks when several generations of baseball players have gone by unnoticed. Many baseball records have been set without being tested for steroids. To start now would be ludacris. It is not the fairness of the morality of the situation, but the fairness of the overall situation.

With my sources, I will be able to prove how fans were more attracted to the game of baseball with the new found homerun surge. Fans are attracted to scoring, which the TV ratings show since 1998, when the surge started. Also, the fact that TV stations were made happy will be proved indirectly through the use of TV rating statistics. The use of personal opinions will be used to show how people also think that asterisks should not be given because the drug testing system is relatively new, and I agree with it.

Blog#1

The three perspectives I took for the exploratory paper were the fans against performance enhancing drug use, the fans for it because they were being more entertained, and the tv stations who enjoyed it because of the ratings. For the most part, I believe that everybody is on the side that says steroids is wrong; that everybody believes that steroids is morally incorrect and is cheating.

The perspective I think that needs to be correct is the side that is the fans who are now being entertained due to the increased amount of homeruns being hit. It is fairly obvious that more fans were getting more into the game since 1998 when the home run surge began.

In order to make this more of a policy, they need to just be more lenient on the use of steroids and not have the media blast on everybody who uses them. Drug testing was effective as of 2004, and steroids were available long before that. That means that everybody before then had the chance to use steroids and no one cared. If they get caught then they get caught, dont make a public scene about it. All records should go asterisk free because theyre now just keying in on people when baseball has been around for more than 100 years.

Policy Change for USC

Everytime I go into Gibbes and get my usual chicken sandwich and drink for lunch, I cringe...twice. One cringe for each time the lady swipes the card, once for meal plan, and the second for the rest of the balance needed to be paid. I think to myself, why can't I use a meal plan for a sandwich and drink? It is a meal after all right? Also, the times of the meals are ridiculous. Dinner is 8 hours long while breakfast and lunch are 10 hours long. To me, that says that USC is thinking "Yes, we know that dinner is about as long as the first two meals of the day, but you're still only going to eat once in that period unless you want to pay cash." My suggestion is to have two meal plans for dinner, or split dinner up into two periods, one being from 4-8 and the other being from 9-12, and allow one meal in that area. That seems a little more reasonable to me.

Now I understand why USC does this. I understand it way too much. Its a business. What do businesses want to maximize? PROFIT! I understand it, I am a business student. I know that if I make students blow a meal plan plus an additional two bucks in carolina cash, over time that carolina cash will decrease and more money will have to be put into the account, which equals more money being spent on USC. I know that getting a sub and drink that puts a kid over the measley dinner mealplan is the stuff they want.

But why? They're so parsimonious its not even funny. Increase the prices per meal, allow for more meals in dinner. Kids will be happy, and they will probably get more service due to it.

Swearing

Both Achenbach and Reilly talk about America's excessive use of swear words. Achenbach just zones in on the "F word" talking about the increase in fines by the FCC for using that word, saying that fines have gone up over $40,000 in the past 10 years. He also talks about the history of the word and things related to that. Reilly talks about overall swearing and the things that colleges have done in order to prevent this from happening. I believe that Achenbach and Reilly take the same stance, both being against the misuse of swearing

I personally buy neither stance because even though people have this feeling that "Swearing is bad and should be used" or something related, You just have to agree that swearing is just becoming more socially acceptable now amongst America's society. My personal opinion is that back in the day, swearing was associated with anger, and when one cursed, it would convey anger and hatred, two traits not highly looked upon. Now the words are just used in the most basic of sentences, like "D..., that pizza was good!" People have becoming more versatile in the past decade, giving more uses to the swear words. They can express joy, happiness, indifference, as well as the common hatred and anger. And just to let you know, I am not a "Swear box." I do have a decent vocabulary to add on to my r'epertoire of curse words and can go easily without swearing, but let people speak. Its conveying anger thats the problem, not the actual word.

In 2007, I gave up one of the biggest things in my life, Bowling. Yes, I used to bowl, and I thought I was really good at it having bowled two perfect games. However, as I got better I started to realize how much I put into practice. Was bowling really what I wanted to do in life? Absolutely not was my answer. Nothing against professional bowlers, but to travel every weekend to not so attractive cities in the U.S just to bowl a tournament while making about as much money as an manager of a store is not every appealing. The event that changed my life was a weekend I spent with friends. Yes, a weekend spent with friends changed the level of importance bowling had to me. Now this is not to say I NEVER got out, but I my ratio of games bowled to hours spent with friends favored the bowling side greatly. This is because I spent so much time bowling that I never really did anything else. On average, I had school every weekday, then bowled an average of 15 to 20 games on the weekends. I continuously got better and my dad and the bowling lanes' coach saw great things for me in the future...in the bowling world. That was simply not for me. It was never a top priority for me to become a top bowler because the lifestyle and I differ in more ways than one. The weekend with friends was all I needed. I told myself that bowling needs to take a step back because I do not want to go anywhere with it, and that's all I needed. I packed the bag and I'm 10x's happier now that I got to spend my final five months before college with my friends.

Shanker discusses how being fat should not be the most of one's worries. She blames modern society and the views that everybody makes on overweight people to explain why people are always trying to slim themselves down to make themselves socially acceptable. In a way she kind of proposes an idea that all people should just push their insecurities aside because they have more important things to pursue, such as a career, family, and friends. Being overweight should be the last of problems. Her target audience in my opinion is everybody who has given up hope for trying to lose weight.

I personally find her credibility to be non existent. Her viewpoint seem to be way too biased. In all honesty, she sounds like a woman who has dieted for way to long and received no results because of her lack of willpower and discipline. From my personal experience, dieting and losing weight is no problem because I dropped about twenty pounds over a four month period. Then again, my statement has about as much credibility as hers, so I am pretty sure that my statement is not very convincing. If she was indifferent towards either viewpoint and sounded like she had more intelligence in the subject she was talking about, then she would not have lack of persuasion that she has now.

On the other hand, we have Eleanor Randolph, who writes about overweight kids and the 10 things that we should do to cure this. I believe he targets everybody who is affected by the topic. Fast food places who advertise with little kids as their subjects, schools districts, parents, and teachers are all on the list of people she tries to target. She proposes ten ideas that these targeted people should do in order to prevent more child and teen obesity.

Her credibility seems to demolish that of Shanker's for one reason: Randolph has absolutely no bias in her proposition. She just seems to be concerned with the rising rates of child and teen obesity. She backs up her arguments with solid statistics, saying that " Over the past 30 years, obesity rates have doubled among pre-schoolers and tripled for those age to 11." She talks about how diabetes and high cholesterol and blood pressure are now becoming serious problems amongst America's youth. Her ten suggestions seem to be very solid suggestions that can easily be used to lower obesity rates. The main difference between Randolph and Shanker is that Shanker speaks too much from personal experience, which gives a really biased point of view. Randolph's use of stats and suggestion gives her a much more persuasive essay. And to be honest with you, she persuaded me a lot in this essay. Shanker just came off as a person who failed at dieting so much that she just conformed to the idea that dieting is impossible.

Freewrite #2. These are fun!

Yes, here it is. Another sports related article. If you are not into sports, then STAY AWAY. THIS POST ISN'T FOR YOU. But then again, its about our beloved Gamecocks, so you might want to. I hope you enjoy the realism in this statement. Here it is. ANYBODY WHO DID NOT SEE THE DOWNFALL OF THE GAMECOCKS IS CRAZY. The only legitimate win where we dominated all 4 quarters of the game was against OVERRATED KENTUCKY. Louisiana Lafeyette(Spelling. I know)? North Carolina? Mississippi State despite the big win? NO! We got lucky during all those games. How are we supposed to win a game when our offense revolves around Cory Boyd, and we DON'T GIVE HIM THE BALL. Yes, we have McKinley, a great NFL-bound receiver, but we have nobody giving him the ball. Our defense? When we allow UL-L to run all over us, we have no chance against anybody. Take away star Jasper Brinkley, and we have a problem. Teams run all over us with ease. Arkansas? Best running attack in the nation. Clemson? CJ Spiller? Uh oh. Florida? Who knows? Ill be happy to win 2 games in this series. Maybe even one.

Prove me wrong USC. Please.

I would like my review to focus mainly on the perspectives I have taken to write this paper as well as my thesis statement. Does it seem like I spent enough time working on each perspective? Which perspective would you like to hear more about or are there other perspectives that you can come up with?

Walking into my friend's room after I ate at Yesterday's last night, he said something that I did not take to heart. The Oklahoma Sooners will lose another game and have no chance at the BCS title game. His arguments included that two teams that they have to play: Texas Tech and Texas A&M, have far superior offenses for Oklahoma to handle. But I thought otherwise. This is the same Oklahoma team that averaged over 50 points a game for the first five games, and the same team that shut down good offensive attacks like Texas and Missouri. Now to say that Oklahoma has no chance is absolutely crazy. They play Texas Tech and Texas A&M every year, and even though they have different offenses then the rest of the Big 12, Oklahoma still sees it every year. Its the concept of adaptability. Oklahoma gets used to it, and coach Bob Stoops knows how to handle it every year. Why do you think Oklahoma has only lost to one of these teams once in the past 7 years? Oklahoma puts out a great defense capable of stopping anybody, and their offense can handle anything a defense has to offer. So don't say Oklahoma does not have a shot at the BCS title game, because with the teams that are ahead of them, other than LSU, it could very will be the case.