Monday, October 31, 2011

Something Borrowed-Gladwell

In his article "Something Borrowed" Gladwell addresses the topic of plagiarism by talking about the how and why aspects of plagiarism. Gladwell's examples of plagiarism and how it is used consist of a variety of songs and artist and a play-writer,  Bryony Lavery. Lavery wrote a play mainly about the life of Dorothy Lewis, a researcher of serial killers using exact moments of her life as well as copying quotes from Gladwell himself when he interviewed Lewis. Gladwell talks to Lavery and finds out that she truly thought it was not plagiarism because she thought it came from the news. Gladwell also explains how musical artist draw inspiration from other artists but tweak it just a bit, so it sounds similar but is now their own original music. He asks the question is this still plagiarism? Gladwell brings to light how people can interpret plagiarism in many different ways, and how it is hard, and almost impossible to draw the line of what is and isn't plagiarism. Every case of plagiarism is unique and different.

The article itself was slightly confusing but I'm pretty sure I understood the main point. The only thing is then, how are WE supposed to interpret plagiarism, and how do we know when to draw the line. Is paraphrasing a form of plagiarism? In high school I was taught to paraphrase in order to avoid plagiarism, but now I am not so sure if that is correct.

Monday, October 17, 2011

the next blog assignment due

In Chapter 7 Jon Ronson realizes that him possessing the power to identify psychopaths may actually be making him conjure up psychopaths in his mind. He wants the people he is interviewing to fit the profile of a psychopath so he makes them fit the checklist specifications. Ronson seeks out a women who is doing something similar to Ronson--she is deducing how crazy someone is by the types of medication they are on. Her names Charlotte and she is doing it for the television show she works on. It results in a man killing himself from being on the show, where she has cast him, because he was "just crazy enough."

Chapter 6 just confirms my previous thoughts on how Charlie Sheen is a psychopath. I am really happy that the whole "diagnosing people as psychopaths" thing almost back-fired in Ronson's face -- unfortunately almost. It would have been amusing if Al Dunlap freaked out about Bob Hare's checklist, but instead it seemed to me that Al Dunlap was almost proud of being named a psychopath. He knew those qualities were part of the checklist yet he still went on to make them sound like good traits in his personality, which I found strange.
This stupid psychopathic checklist has everyone going mad. In chapter 7 he taught his wife how to use the checklist and now she too is deciding whether people are psychopaths or not! But finally!, he has realized that the psychopath checklist is making him MAKE people be psychopaths (as in the way Ronson views them, not actually making people kill each other). The last sentence of chapter 7 says "at least I haven't done anything as bad as Charlotte has done." I think that is probably foreshadowing.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Research Question:Blog Assignment 4

Is alcoholism genetic environmental, or based on something else?

I stole this idea from you, sorry, but when I heard you mention the question in class I became extremely interested. My father is an alcoholic as well as a few of my relatives from my mother's side; but they don't admit it. So, when you came up with the question in class I started thinking more and more about it because if in fact alcoholism IS genetic, well i have a pretty darn high risk of becoming one. Now if it is environmental my risk is greatly lowered. Otherwise I was also thinking about the research question 'Is homosexuality genetic or environmental?' Once again I have family history with this topic. My uncle, great uncle, and a few cousins are gay so researching this topic would be fun and explain why I have so many gay people in my family--assuming that it is genetic. I'm not quite sure that either of these topics actually have answers, more like theories or assumptions so my question might never actually be answered. I have never written a research paper so I don't exactly know how you go about acquiring sources. The internet would be the easiest, but also the most unreliable I would think. For these topics I think books and other people's research papers would be the best place to start looking for information on these topics.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Chapter 4 summary

Chapter 4 focuses on Jon Ronson learning the psychopath test checklist and how to apply it to everyday people in order to categorize them as psychopathic or non-psychopathic, particularly Tony (who we learned lives in Broadmoor from a previous chapter). Ronson meets with Bob Hare to learn more about his psychopathic test at a 3 day seminar. Here Ronson was taught 20 aspects of people to look for when trying to determine the psychopathy of a person. By the end of Chapter 4 Jon Ronson wasn't so focused on if Tony was a psychopath, but if the CEOs and politicians of our world are truly psychopaths. Ronson had an extreme desire to figure out this mystery no matter what the consequences.

I think that giving Ronson the "power" to decided if people are truly psychopaths is a horrendous idea being that he is extremely paranoid. His anxiety could lead him to believe that everyone is a psychopath, considering everyone does fall into one or more of the categories on the psychopath checklist. I'm so confused. If Ronson didn't go to the psychopathic test seminar until after he met Tony, and he met with Constant BEFORE he met Tony, then why does he already know the psychopathic test? Or is he just going through that occurence in his mind? -Yes that's what happened. Ronson should have been more clear. Also I think Charlie Sheen is a psychopath.