The End of the Line...

Today, I see everybody in my hall packing up all of their stuff and checking out of their tiny dorms to commit the next three months of their lives to nothing other than, summer. I, however, am sitting here studying for an understanding music final exam that I still have yet to take, so I thought I should take a break from studying and write a final fare well blog.

When writing essays for English 2 this year I have tried to show a lot of my own voice in these papers so the reader or audience can really see my personality. I wanted my character to come out of these essays, and to my surprise I was shooting for one main goal, and that was to present ethos in my arguments. What exactly is a good definition of ethos? Being from a Greek fluent family, I know all about this word; ethos comes from the greek word ethikos (ἠθικός) meaning the showing of moral character. So, ethos couldn't be more easily defined than the showing of your personality or character. Looking back at my papers throughout the special, you can see that all of them have shown some of my personality or interest. The first assignment was rhetorical analysis, and for this assignment, I decided to show an image advertisement for the tempurpedic pillow. I used this object because sleep is the most important aspect of my everyday life, and I pride myself among my pillow. It is the number one thing that helps me sleep through the night, and I have to say that I absolutely love it.

The next assignment was the claim paper, where I examined the argument of texting and driving versus drunk driving. I used this topic for my paper because being a teenage college student, I admit that I text and drive frequently, so I wanted to see what kind of facts I would see when researching for this paper. Interestingly enough, I was at more danger while my eyes were on my phone while driving, than if I were to drive intoxicated. I definitely changed my driving habits after I turned in my final paper. It was fun to write this paper because it related so much to my own life and many other lives of teenage students like myself. I'm sure that many my other classmates in English Composition 2 are victims of texting and driving!



The last assignment was the rogerian essay, in which I attempted to bring common ground to the classic argument of deforestation is ruining the natural earth. Being an environmental engineer, I am obviously not for deforestation but conservation of natural resources, so this topic was most appealing to me. Through research I was able to see some of the claims that high-end logging companies were able to say about what they do for the earth's conservation and how they do it. Obviously, forest conservation sights aren't going to tell you everything that logging companies do to conserve as much as the earth as possible, but only the bad facts. It was very comforting, being an environmental engineer myself, to see that most of these logging companies actually plant back the trees that they cut down.

Well, you know who I am through my paper, but most of you probably do not know me as a person really. I came to the University of Oklahoma from Austin, Texas where I grew up throughout my entire childhood. I am in the fraternity of Sigma Phi Epsilon where I met most of my friends I have today at OU. I enjoy the summer time the most out of the year, which is why I am extra excited to be done with this semester of school. In the summer, I am an avid wakeboarder, and all together just like to be on the lake with friends. I enjoyed this semester of English, and believed that it taught me to be a better writer through argument type paper. Since this last blog is about ethos, my personality when I am away from school is very fun. I am definitely the loudest person in my family and am always willing to do something fun. I was the pledge trainer for our spring pledge class in the fraternity. So if anyone is ever bored and is interested in doing something during some down time, you can definitely call me up and I am always ready.

The NBA Finals

Soon the 2009-2010 NBA season will come to an end, and if you have been following the season throughout the whole year, then you know about Lebron James. It seems that every ESPN news broadcaster is always worshipping The King. Every Top 10 highlight series that they show always has one to three or four little clips of Lebron James either dunking on somebody or swatting another player's shot away. Lebron James has won the league's Most Valuable Player for the past two seasons in a row. Yes, this is some accomplishment, but should Lebron be all over the news every single second of the day? ">

I'll let you be the judge after watching this YouTube highlight video of The King himself.

However, The Cleveland Cavaliers are in a bit of hole in this year's playoffs. They are down 3-2 in a series versus the Boston Celtics. Can Lebron James lead his Cavaliers to a come from behind series win so they can continue their season, or will they lose their game tonight and be shut down of yet another NBA Championship?

Regardless of the NBA Finals, ESPN sports specialists are deciding whether or not Lebron James is comparable to the all time great Michael Jordan. It seems that both numbers are very comparable, but Michael Jordan has something that Lebron James does not yet have, a championship. If and when James wins a couple of championships, I think that James will become the greatest basketball player of all time so far.

Believe It Or Not: Technology In An Interesting Way

Recently in this past spring college semester, I have been very interested in different kind of "ghost hunting" television shows. I've seen a couple on the Discovery Channel and a few different ones on the Travel Channel. Each show has the same goal as they throw themselves into the most haunted houses and buildings throughout the world for the night; this goal is to see if in fact there are actual findings of supernatural beings that "haunt" the house. In my opinion, ghosts are real. I don't believe in the ghosts that you see on regular kids movies of that sort, but I believe that spirits of different types of historical people have been left behind on this earth. The only way to see if this is true or not, these ghost hunters use different types of very advanced instruments to try and detect and communicate with these so called spirits.

Some of the different instruments they use are a classic video camera with night vision, digital audio recorders, electromagnetic frequency detector, and/or thermal scanner. All of these different types of technology aid in finding out if the actual building you are searching is haunted or not. The video camera with night vision obviously is used for video logging your experiences as well as aiding you get around the pitch black house since you don't want to ghost hunt with any types of light. Ghost hunters use the digital audio recorders to provoke the spirits and see if they can get a response back from the spirit. Usually the sound that will come back from the recording is a very muffled noise that has to be enhanced, and usually is still a little sketchy. The electromagnetic frequency detector is an instrument that is used to detect any type of electricity running through the air (also known as energy). So, when you search the haunted building, you don't want to have any electricity running through the building. When the EMF detector spikes, that usually means there is some unsuspected energy floating around the air, and it is thought that when ghosts want to communicate, they use the energy of the atmosphere which causes the spike of that EMF detector. As for the thermal scanner or thermal camera, ghost hunters can detect any type of change in temperature that could signify heat or energy given off by a ghost.

Even if you do not believe in ghosts whatsoever, I definitely encourage watching the show "Ghost Hunters" on the Travel Channel. If anything, it will be some good, chilling entertainment, and after watching that show, I'll leave it up to you to see if you believe in these types of ghosts or not.

A Day Without Technology

A few weeks ago I decided to go ahead and challenge myself to a day without technology. Every day, I see flocks of people attached to their cell phone or attached to their iPod, and I thought to myself, "Am I attached like some of these people are?" I decided to go ahead and see if I could manage my day without any technology at all. To my surprise after looking back on that day, I was extremely more relaxed and less stressed. I didn't have to shove my hand down my pocket if I felt a little vibration telling me that somebody was trying to tell me something. It was like I was in my own little world for the entire day, and it was wonderful.

However, once I got back to my room I was all of the sudden bored beyond belief. I didn't have my computer, my phone, or my television to keep me from being bored to tears. I also could not call anyone to see what they were doing and to see if they wanted to hang out. I ended up going on an hour walk by myself looking for people and looking for something to do. I must have picked a rough day because the campus was absolutely dead. I guess everybody decided to start studying a couple weeks before finals week.

After the long and excruciating day came to an end, I quickly turned on my phone and television to catch up on what the day had cooked up. To my surprise I had several messages asking what I was doing and if I wanted to go eat or go kick around the soccer ball. I guess communication has officially shifted over to technological communication, because without my phone, I would have never seen any of those messages asking me to hang out or do anything. What do you think about this use of technology?

Deep In the Heart of Texas

Well, it's about that time again where we all head back to our homes for the summer to see our family and old friends from grade school. For a lot of people in our English class, that means drive to Oklahoma City, OK, or maybe to Dallas, TX. For me, however, going home for the summer means going deep into the heart of Texas, or as most Sooners like to call it, "the place they hate more than anything", Austin, Texas. Most people that go to the University of Oklahoma have never even thought of going to such a horrible sounding place, but to many peoples surprise, Austin is a gorgeous city with so much to do everywhere you go. I couldn't pick out a better place to grow up than Austin. Even though all I see when I am home is burnt orange and longhorns, I still wouldn't want to move out of Austin even after college.

A lot of people ask me or have asked me, "Since you're from Austin, Texas, why in the world did you choose the University of Oklahoma to go to school?" The answer is simple, OUs campus is so beautiful, and I can't help to say that I wanted to go a little further from home than most people so that I could live on my own for a change, since my parents wanted to try and baby me all through high school.

Some things that I like to do while I am home is go out on the lake and go wakeboarding. Being an avid wakeboarder/lake person, anytime I get the chance to go out on the lake, I take it. Downtown Austin is also a very fun experience. 6th street, a world-wide famous street known for its live music attractions is actually what made Austin, Texas the live music capital of the world. If you get the chance to take a visit to Austin, I would definitely take it and go experience a once in a lifetime chance, especially if you are a sooner!

Comforting Identity - Brett Zogas

Zogas, Brett

English 1213

Paul Mitchell

15 February 2010

Comforting Identity

My identity can be seen or understood in many different ways. One may look at me and have feelings about my way of life by the type of clothes I wear on a daily basis. People may stereotype me by what kind of activities I attend and take part in on the weekends, or by the movies or television shows that I enjoy watching while I have some down time. The electronics I use every day are very helpful and convenient, but I wouldn’t use those items as a way to identify myself. I wouldn’t identify myself with any of the things that I just listed however. The thing that I need the most is my sleep, and that all starts with a great pillow. I sleep with a Tempur-PedicÒ pillow and I really think that it is a great product and really gets the job done during my sleep.

The Tempur-PedicÒ website was created by the tempurpedic company in Lexington, Kentucky for the purpose of showing and explaining their many different bedding products that they offer. The company wants to explain why their product is worth the buyers money, so they add many pictures of their product with captions near them explaining how the product would make you feel. Like many other advertisements, whether they are online like this one, or on television, they show you only what they want you to see. If the item is expensive, like this product, they show the price range near the bottom in smaller font. They show reviews of other customers that are satisfied by the product, but they do not show the responses of dissatisfied customers. Also, in the companies explanation of the product, they use very emotion evoking adjectives to pull the customer more in to buying the product, in this case the pillow. Being that the advertisement is showing a pillow, the focus of the ad is to persuade customers that they will sleep so much more sound with this, so to say, better pillow. There are pictures embedded into the ad of people lying on the pillow with smiles on their faces to illustrate the fact that the product is satisfying. The message of this advertisement is simply comfort. The website does a great job in conveying that message because of the choice of words the author uses to explain the product to the readers. It is very important that this message is easy to see because when consumers are looking for comfort in a pillow, they want to be confident in buying a pillow because most likely the pillow that they buy will have to satisfy them for a long time. The audience that this ad is directly speaking to is people that are in need of a new, well-designed pillow. Many of the people that buy the Tempur-PedicÒ pillow are looking for a pillow that will relieve neck or back pain by having a good, firm support but also with a high level of comfort. People with high levels of stress also tend to like this pillow because the pillow really does adequately hit pressure points that relieve or take away stress. Many of the captions used to show the product use terms like stress-reliever, or “body molding support”. Also, people that are just looking for a new, comfortable pillow to sleep on are targeted with this ad. I feel that I am hit with a good deal amount of stress throughout my day. Most people know that being a college student can be a very stressful time period in your life. So, the online advertisement does apply directly toward me; the individual quotes from recent customers explaining how their stress levels were reduced due to the supportive tempurpedic pillow made me want to try out the pillow to see if I got the same results. Sure enough I did, and I love my pillow. The genre of the website is relaxation. The company did a good job in making the website very soft with the colors and kind of font they used. Also, their pictures are very simple and perfect so to say. The ad also does a good job in keeping the reader interested while going through the website. They do this by having different parts of the website where you can compare beds and pillows with other leading companies. Right when you go to the product’s website, a few pictures of satisfied models are shown laying on the bed and pillow laughing and smiling, which immediately puts the viewer into a good and relaxed mood as they start to shop for new bedding. The reader can then click on all of the different products being advertised on the website and read about what the product has to offer, and then the viewer can look at different views to get a good perspective on if the product is worth purchasing. There are many testimonies from recent customers to help persuade you in your purchase. All in all the advertisement does a good job in displaying the product in a relaxed environment.

I identify with this product because like a lot of people who know me, know that I am a man of perfect sleep. I love having a great nights rest to propel me through the day. Having a good night of sleep and having an adequate sleeping schedule is very important to staying healthy, especially during a time period like college. I may not have the most comfortable bed as a college student, but I have a comfortable pillow which assists me in my night’s rest. I identify myself with this product, however I do not think that this product represents me as a person. Even though I affiliate myself with this item every day, people cannot tell that I use this product unless they have seen my bed. It’s not like a clothing line that people see me wearing every day, and think of me when they see that clothing line somewhere else. When somebody sees a tempurpedic pillow, that person will not think of me. I chose this item to identify myself because sleep is one thing that I value most about my lifestyle, and the pillow on my bed excels in making sure that my night of sleep is very nourishing to my body. The advertisement to me does not persuade me to go out and purchase the product because everything with a pillow is the feeling. An author can use as many descriptive words in explaining the feeling of a pillow, but the reader doesn’t truly know if the pillow is comfortably satisfying or worth the money until that person goes out and feels the pillow with their own two hands, or tries it out for a couple of nights to see whether or not there is any improvement in sleep. So, I do identify my being with the Tempur-PedicÒ pillow because of the way I view the importance of sleep and sleeping patterns, but I would not use this object as a way of representing myself to somebody else.