Blog E – Eboo Patel – “Is Your Campus Diverse? It’s a Question of Faith” Pg. 214

1. The single sentence that best captures Patel’s main idea would be “what if recruiting a religiously diverse student body, creating welcoming environment for people of different faith and philosophical identities, and offering classes in inter-faith studies and co-curricular opportunities in inter-faith leadership became the norm?”. I think this sentence says a lot about Patel’s ideas, he asks for the norm to be changed and for more mingling between religious groups.
2. Patel used the fact that Obama becoming president could be linked to the 1990’s multicultural movement on college campuses, this makes the audience believe that if we change the norms on campuses that we could one day change the outcome of our nation’s leaders and potentially make being a person of a non-Christian religion not have a negative connotation. Also, Patel mentions that in the Obama campaign, one thing that could not be ignored was his religious background.
3. When Patel talked about “Social capital among faith communities” he meant that people of different faiths need to talk more openly and respectfully to gain more social power. That social power or social capital could allow them to gain more followers and respect with other religions to help ease the current sigma against certain religions.
4. Patel points out to the audience that the people who attend college are our worlds future leaders, they are the people who are most likely to be in a position of power. So when some college kid becomes very involved with a cause and then they become a leader, they will still advocate for those social changes in their campaign. When a large amount of people are advocating for the same social change and they are the “future of America”, then the likelihood for that change happening increases.
5. An “underrepresented narrative” is the story of the common man, or the person who’s story will never be covered in the news or heard of outside of their group of family or friends. The concept is important to this article because there are people struggling with their religion having certain prejudices and their story will never be told because the media doesn’t cover those issues.

Blog D – Steven D. Krause “Living Within Social Networks” Pg. 146

1. The Toyota ad helped the argument because it shows that connection now is defined as something different than being connected. The ad supports the idea that just because you have hundreds of friends on Facebook doesn’t mean that they have hundreds of friends in the real world. It can cause loneliness due to friends only posting their fun and active social life but they only post the highlights of their life.
2. Krause uses quotation marks around “read” and “watch” because he is trying to show the difference between reading a person and reading something online. He is suggesting that things we do online affect how we are in person, it all translates over mediums from online to the real world and changes how we see people.
3. Facebook does many things to a person and their loneliness level. Facebook has the chance to make someone feel as if they don’t have an exciting social life or an extremely exciting social life. Social media, as I said earlier, gives you a false sense of connectedness.
4. Living is being. As said in the last paragraph both the parties in the Toyota commercials are both “living”. Krause makes the point that “living” has no normal, “living” is defined by the person and that if someone is doing something they enjoy, it is living. He makes the point that living is up to the person.
5. Krause opposes Scruton opinion because Krause thinks it’s situational if a person can handle social media and their actual social life, but Scruton believes that a social media life causes you to lose track with the real world and real social lives. Scruton doesn’t believe you can balance the two and that they are not allowing themselves to experience real life.

Blog C – Robert Lane Greene “OMG, ETC” Pg. 129

1. When Greene uses examples from different age groups, different cultures, and different languages it just proves that his point is broader than just an American view of acronyms. It shows that his main idea can span over cultural differences, linguistic differences, and age differences. His examples give him credibility and makes us, the audience more responsive to believing him.
2. Some examples of phrases that show Greene’s attitude towards acronyms would be “Now, LOL means ‘you just said something so amusing my lip curled for a moment there.”, “the one who used to be just the boss , or the managing director, now styles himself the CEO… This alone would be one thing, but it turned into a viral infection”, and “then since nobody want to say [erectile dysfunction] either, ‘ED.'”, these all show his disdain for acronyms. He feels as if they dilute and water down our language and written language. This reminds me of 1984 and the idea of “new speak”.
3. Greene defends acronyms when talking about both the military and medical field. He does this people using acronyms can help people face the reality that either they can lose their lives be fighting in war or by an illness. It separates the reality from the words and allows the people not to dwell on the fact that they are facing life or death. They use acronyms as a framing tool to put something grim into a more pleasant light, for example “ED” doesn’t sound as bad as “erectile dysfunction”.
4. The statements don’t contradict each other because although acronyms seem American, and other cultures use American acronyms like “LOL” doesn’t mean that the culture itself isn’t seeking acronyms within their own language. For example the Chinese have acronyms based on a “character-based” language, this proves that multiple people are seeking a quicker way of writing in this fast paced world.
5. The “seductive quasi-certainty” is when soldiers used acronyms in place by the government as a way to poke fun at something by changing the acronyms meaning, like when soldiers talk “ISAF” which stands for “International Stabilization Force for Afghanistan” and joke that it actually stands for “I suck at fighting”. This allows the soldiers to separate themselves from the reality like I discussed in question three. Also, it show that acronyms aren’t always used as intended. “LOL” used to be for when something was actually funny, and now it is used as a filler for a text conversation. This shows that just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the meaning of an acronym is in brain of the interpreter.

Again, I apologize for the mild lateness. Thank you.

Blog B – Sharon Begeley and Jean Chatzky “The New Science Behind Your Spending Addiction” Pg. 67

1. Begley and Chatzky report that the need for instantly gratification is actually because our brains are sort of “wired” that way, it’s determined by the communication between the prefrontal cortex and the midbrain. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for stopping the brain from wanting something, and the midbrain is responsible for making you want something. They report that this generation may not save as much because they want instant reward, for example Begley and Chatzky remind us of instant messaging, 1 click online shopping, and accessing virtually any answer on the internet in no time by using Google. They also talked about the different chemicals, such as oxytocin which makes the brain change from being a spender to a saver. Oxytocin reduces anxiety and allows our brains to properly make decisions. They also mentioned the method of transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is where the “turn off and on” parts of the brain like the prefrontal cortex so that someone is more like to say no to their midbrain’s impulses. They make the argument that today’s society is about getting something and getting it now. We are less likely to save because we aspire to have great jobs that will pay for things like our student loans later in life. We also have liming experience in the world which makes us have a “why get it later when I can have it now” attitude. We definitely see our time as money.
2. The “moneybrain” is the gray matter in the brain that regulates spending and saving and other “crucial” decisions. Someone with a good “moneybrain” would be a saver who thinks about the future gain more than instant gain. It’s not just that part of the brain that separates us into savers and spenders, personality types are influential to this categorization. This plays right into Begley and Chatzky’s ideas about the brain’s impulses to spend or save by validating that the brain’s connections and predisposition is responsible for how a person thinks about the future.
3. The marshmallow experiment was done in 1960s where scientists offered 4 year olds a single marshmallow to eat now but if they could patiently wait a few minutes while the experimenter left the room and came back they could have 2 marshmallows. It showed that most of the kids couldn’t justify waiting for two when they could have one right now. They children that actually waiting were shown to have better test scores, less like to become a drug addict and less likely to become obese. This shows that people who can wait for future gain are more successful because they think about their future gain.
4. As someone who just took a psychology course, neuroplasticity is very important and interesting. One thing that they neglected to mention is the brain is able to change easily before age 30, then won’t really change after age 50. So yes, in theory a person could train and change their brain with ease before the age of 30. This is extremely important to their main idea of wanting your brain to be better at saving. Without this concept, they wouldn’t have much to build their argument off of, this proves that you can change the connections in your brain that you built since childhood and become a better saver even if you have had bad impulse issues in the past.
5. It’s important that they said scientists haven’t proved they the brain differences between the generations because that says that their main idea that their trying to argue is our generation is more inpatient and impulsive. Without the science behind it, their argument is more opinion based and less scientific. I think this works for their argument because up until the last paragraph I agreed with their argument, and in the last two paragraphs they used our generational differences to prove their point that we are more impulsive as a society.