Do we need monogamous, heterosexual relationships????

            In a society that has a 50% divorce rate, heterosexual, monogamous marriages are hard to come by. Why is this? Why do ½ of the marriages fail? Is it due to evolution or the influences of society? Actually, the answer is both. Both society and evolution are affecting the length, reasons, intensity, and cause of our relationships. So if evolution plays a part. How can we change the outcome? Can we? Yes we can!

            “Humans are designed to fall in love… they aren’t designed to stay there.” (Wright 280) This isn’t true! Have you never seen that adorable older couple, still in love with each other? Sure they may argue, bicker, fight, and disagree but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other anymore. Many couples are able to work through their disagreements. According to Wright, “The human mind was designed for the purpose of transmitting genes to the next generation; feelings of lust, no less that the sex organs, are here because they aided reproduction directly.” (Wright 280) The whole reason we feel lust is in order to reproduce. In evolutionary psychology, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a monogamous relationship, as long as you are spreading your genes.

            When it comes to evolutionary psychology, there is no need for monogamous relationships. The whole point of being human and having sex organs is so that we can reproduce and make sure our species doesn’t go extinct. So in this sense, heterosexual, monogamous marriage doesn’t matter as long as you are having children. I don’t agree with the fact that we don’t need marriages, as long as we are having children. We are a species who no longer depends on evolution to make sure we have children. We are such an over populated world that having children now is for the couple, not the world. To me, we need to have marriage and monogamous relationships because love is something special that two people share. It’s not about making sure there are enough humans on this planet, because there are PLENTY!!!

As the human species we no longer need to worry about spreading our genes. Now we are worried about finding our soul mates. In the sense of evolutionary psychology, no we do not need monogamous, heterosexual relationships. We only need to find mates to reproduce with in order to make sure we spread our genes. In the sense of humans today, we need monogamous relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual. We aren’t as worried about spreading genes and making sure there are enough humans on this world so that our species doesn’t go extinct. Now we are worried about finding love, and that is all that we really need. 

Why Isn't He Listening?!?!?!

            I chose to write my blog on the Directed Freewrite on page 246. The article “Sex, Lies, and Conversation” by Deborah Tannen was amazing!!! I have been married for four month, but before that we had been dating for three years. I noticed myself agreeing to everything she was talking about. The fact that men don’t like to talk, unless in public, and that men tend to look at something else while having a conversation are all true. All of these things would drive me NUTS!!!! I would try to talk to my husband and he would look away from me, and I thought he wasn’t listening. After reading this essay though, I have a new understanding as to why men do what they do during conversations (Tannen 243).

            There is one topic that my husband and I can NEVER agree on, and that is that age old question: “What’s for dinner?” I HATE asking this question because the response I always get is “I don’t know, what are you in the mood for?” I feel like I never get a straight up answer. He tends to brush it off if I don’t answer back immediately, and then he is back to his computer. Every once in a while he will try to strike up the topic again and ask if I’ve decided on anything, and this can usually lead to an argument. Most of the time I eventually cave in a just decide what’s for dinner and he usually goes along with it. If he doesn’t, I tell him he should have decided before I did. This doesn’t play out too well.

            After reading this essay I can see that our conflict is pretty normal. When I ask him something and he replies with a quick answer and then jumps onto the computer, it doesn’t mean he isn’t listening but it’s what guys do. He may still be listening to me and I get upset over nothing. He also doesn’t talk a lot because he doesn’t have anything to prove, and feels comfortable with me deciding. Both of these things I don’t think I would have learned without reading this essay. This essay really helped put into perspective why a guy acts a certain way during conversations. Now when I ask him what is for dinner and he responds with a short answer, I can tell him to stop being such a guy!!!!!

Unit 2 Blog Reviews 9/21 -9/27

Darien:

I love your writing. You have so much voice throughout your essay and it makes it enjoyable to read. The length of your blog was perfect. You were able to convey all your thoughts and idea’s perfectly and it wasn’t too long. Your writing style is incredible. Your transitions are very smooth and your word choice is excellent. I only read your Thursday blog because I didn’t see your Real Wild Women/Men blog anywhere. Maybe I missed it, but so far just reading your one essay gave me great insight into your writing styles. I really can’t wait to read more of your blogs and see how our opinions differ!

April:

I really liked your Changing Families entry. I agree with you completely, especially when you talked about the first changes in families. I agree that the first drastic change began when women were starting to find jobs. I am glad you pointed that out in your essay, because I didn’t think about adding that to mine. Your transitions are extremely smooth. It really makes your entries easy to read. I also liked your Real Wild Women/Men blog. I loved the Rocky Horror Picture Show and that is a GREAT example of Wild Men. Your essays are filled with opinions and it is great to see you being so open and honest. I can’t wait to read more!!!

Gay Society and Capitalism

            I will try to do the best I can at answering the question, but it was a little confusing to me. John D’Emilio wrote an essay about how capitalism has “constructed” the gay/lesbian identity. There are many questions that we must ask ourselves before we can determine whether or not this is true. Has gay/lesbian identity been around forever, or has it emerged with the beginning of capitalism? Has this change in identity affected our families, identities, and economic status? Just because men and women have found comfort in the same sex, does that mean that our entire future has changed? D’Emilio has answered these questions in his essay.

            According to D’Emilio, gay/lesbian identity hasn’t been around forever. Instead it emerged as capitalism emerged. So, are the two things tied together? D’Emilio believes so (D’Emilio 227). The way he explains this is that capitalism expanded with the expansion of wage labor. In the early 1700’s, women depended on men for money. Men owned land, and their wives worked with crops for food that came off that land. During this time, it was almost impossible for a woman to live on her own because she had no way of getting money or essentials. As wage labor became popular, more women were able to support themselves. Still, men were more likely to get jobs and also made more than women, but this was still an improvement. Because of this, women were able to explore without having to be in a marriage, and the same with men. More men and women were expressing themselves sexually with others of the same sex, and they were able too. By then sex wasn’t just to procreate, it started to become a thing that helped bring people closer together and it became a form of expression (D’Emilio 228-231).

            Because women no longer relied on men, due to capitalism, D’Emilio believes that capitalism is what started homosexuality. More men and women were getting paid to work, allowing them to live on their own. Also, women were now able to survive without being dependant on males, and the need for children diminished. Many of these things have changed our economic structure. Just think, if capitalism had never been established, us women would still be on farms owned by our husbands, taking care of our seven children. We would be farming, sewing, cooking, and not getting paid to do any of the hard work we put in. When capitalism finally emerged, it allowed women to get paying jobs and, therefore, didn’t need men. This gave women the chance to experiment with other women and men were able to experiment with other men. So I agree with D’Emilio when he says that capitalism may have been the start of homosexual societies, but I don’t agree with the fact that homosexuals weren’t around before the 1700’s.

           

Women Empowerment

            When I think of movies with “Real Wild Women” or “Real Wild Men”, many movies come to mind. For example, The Birdcage with Robin Williams or Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia Roberts. Both of these movies have really captured societies views on what men and women should be and act like, and they have turned that on its side. They show the story of two gay men and their lives trying to run from police and stay as “normal” as possible, or a woman who is haunted by her husbands need for control. But none of these compare to the movie that I think really captures real women. The movie I am thinking about shows women empowerment and desire. It shows a woman doing something many think is impossible. The movie that I think captures real women is Enough with Jennifer Lopez.

            This movie is incredible. It is about a woman, Jennifer Lopez, who marries this really amazing guy. They have a little girl, Gracie, and seem to have the perfect lives. One day she finds out he is cheating on her and confronts him, but to her surprise all he says is that “It’s better this way. Now I don’t have to go sneaking around pretending I’m going to work.” Of course this enrages her and she argues with him about how she is the one staying home and taking care of the family and house, and how dare he cheat on her. His response is by hitting her and telling her “See what happens when you upset me.” This movie play on the “weak woman, stronger man” point of view. That men are the ones with the power and women have no power at all. This movie turns that all around though. By the end of the movie, Lopez has taken self-defense classes and has learned many different skills that she could use to defend herself against her husband, and that is exactly what she does. She defends herself and saves her and her daughter from any more violence from him, making this truly a happy ending.

            I love this movie because it isn’t just about a woman in an abusive relationship. It’s about a woman who was in an abusive relationship, but decided to do something about it. Not many movies show this side of women, and that is why I really enjoyed this movie. Of course, society has this mindset that men are stronger than women, and therefore are in control but this movie really dissolves this view. The filmmakers did choose a man who was bigger and tough looking, compared to Jennifer Lopez who is a smaller girl and doesn’t look like she could win a fight against a teddy bear. But I think they did this on purpose! They wanted to show that just because she is smaller than her husband doesn’t mean she can beat the crap out of him

            This movie is a great example of real women, because not all women will stand to be in an abusive relationship. Many will take control of the situation in any way possible. Sure, the filmmakers chose very stereotype men and women to play the main characters, but I think this was to get their point across. If you 

Week 4 Blog Reviews

Katie:

Your Can Machines Think? essay was really incredible. If I hadn’t have read that essay I would still be able to understand what Wright was talking about because you explained it so well. I also loved your opinions in there. They were very strong and you backed them up with nice, strong facts. I think your flow was very smooth and you had a strong argument to go off of. This was a well thought out essay.

Then I read your essay on Frida’s painting. I was so impressed!! I skipped right over the painting and read your description and you described it PERFECTLY! I scrolled back up and what I had imagined, by your description, was exactly what I saw. I love how you really understood the painting and the meanings for everything that was shown (the sun and moon and the two different shells). You can tell that you really understood the work of art you were looking at. Great job!

Lauren:

I liked your Robotic Beings Rule the World essay, but I would add more to the essay. Since the assignment was to summarize the essay for someone who has never read it before, I would have added more of a summary in the intro. After reading your essay it was clear what your opinion is, and that’s great, but if I hadn’t have read the essay before I wouldn’t understand what it is about.

On the other hand, your description of Frida’s painting was phenomenal. Without looking at the painting I was able to picture every detail that you described. My favorite thing was that as you described the painting you added your interpretation. I really loved seeing how you interpreted the painting and what your thoughts were about why Frida drew what she drew. This was a well thought out essay.

Jackie:

I thought your Can Machines Think? essay was a little unorganized. I felt you jumped from one idea to the next very quickly without any kind of transition. I didn’t get a sense of what the essay really talked about, even though that’s what the assignment was. But I was able to tell what your point of view was on this topic. Next time, I would maybe make an outline and try to organize all your thoughts into related groups. For example, with an essay all about computers, the last paragraph really threw me off when you introduced the topic of God. I would try to stick to one main idea in each essay.

I’m speechless after reading your essay on Frida Kahlo’s Broken Column. I wasn’t able to see the picture, but I didn’t need to!! You described everything so vividly that it would be near impossible to not be able to picture this piece of art. Your descriptions were incredible and your interpretations were outstanding. This is by far, one of my favorite blogs that you have posted so far. This was written so well and you had great smooth transitions. Great job on this essay!!!

My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

After looking through many of Frida Kahlo’s paintings, one really stood out to me. The painting My Grandparents, My Parents, and I is a busy, intricate painting. The largest figure, off center, is a lady in a white dress. The lady has a fetus in her hand with an umbilical cord disappearing under her dress. On the right of the lady, directly in the center of the painting, is a middle aged gentleman dressed in a suite. The lady’s arm is resting on his shoulder. In front of the man is a tiny child. The child is naked, holding a ribbon which flows under the man and woman. This ribbon then flows under the woman leads to another man and woman that are located in the top left corner of the painting. Both the man and the woman are older and dark skinned. Under the man and woman is a desert scene with mountains and cacti. On the opposite side of the painting, top right corner, is another couple. This couple is connected to the man in the center of the painting by a ribbon. Both the man and the woman are older with lighter colored skin. With all of these different elements there is a lot to look at.

I was really drawn to this painting because it had some deeper meaning. The man and woman in the center of the painting, I assume, are Frida’s parents. Connected to the mother is a fetus, Frida, with the umbilical cord still attached. In front of the parents is Frida as an infant. She is holding a ribbon which symbolizes a blood line. This blood line flows from Frida’s mother to her grandparents on her mother side. I can guess that these two are from Mexico because of the desert scene that lies below them. Coming from the dad is another blood line that flows to Frida’s grandparents on her father’s side. I would guess they were from America or Europe because of their light colored skin. As a whole, this painting represents Frida’s family. It shows her parents and grandparents, and how each grandparent is related.

I really liked this painting because there was a lot to it, and at first glance it seems confusing, but if you look closer it is pretty simple. I loved the way she represented her family. It wasn’t really like a family tree; instead it was very artistic. The way the ribbon flowed from grandparents to parents and that Frida was the one holding the ribbon was genius.


Works Cited:
Kahlo, Frida. My Grandparents, My Parents, and I. 1936. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.         About.com: Art History. Web. 08 September 2010

Week 3 Blog Reviews

Lauren:
I loved your Directed Freewrite essay. I am very impressed! I tried to do my essay on that and couldn’t answer ANY of the questions. I love the sentence “an idea is a thought taken for a walk”. That was such a good image and very powerful. I could picture this little tiny thing and as the “walk” progressed, it got bigger and bigger. This essay really showed me how creative you are. I loved reading it and wanted more! Please keep up your creativeness; it’s so much fun to read!


Jackie:
I really liked your Are We Smarter Than a Robot essay. I thought it was well constructed and laid out. Your paragraphs were strong and full of opinions. My favorite part of your essay was your second paragraph where you were talking about the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. I agree with you completely that AI will only surpass us once it supersets our intelligence. I also agree with you that the human brain won’t ever be duplicated by a machine. I love your strong opinions and can’t wait to see how much we agree and disagree in the following units.


Katie:
I loved your What is Consciousness essay. You and I had different views on this one, which is why I really liked reading your essay. I believe that the study of consciousness is scientific while you don’t, which was really cool. I liked that we had different viewpoints because I really wanted to read why you thought otherwise. I agree with you when you said that it is amazing that this day in age scientists still can’t decide on a definition. You would think by now they would be able to. I thought your essay was a little shorted and needed just a little more, but what you had was great. Your opinion definitely shined and I was really impressed. I can’t wait to see what other viewpoints we disagree on.

Can Computers Think?

Robert Wright is an incredibly intelligent man who wrote an essay called “Can Machines Think? Maybe So, As Deep Blue’s Chess Prowess Suggests”. This essay is an argument about whether or not machines can think. Throughout this essay Robert Wright shows many opinions based on different facts, observations, and experiments. In the end though, it is difficult to determine whether a machine can think. There are many tests it has to pass and not only that, but do pleasure, pain, love and grief play a part in thinking? If so then machines cannot think, because they cannot feel love and pain. All of these questions were address by Wright in his essay.

According to Wright, it is difficult to say whether machines can think. He used the example of the IBM computer, Deep Blue, which was a chess champion. Garry Kasparov, a world chess champion, decided to try to beat IBM in a chess competition to prove that computers can’t outsmart humans. Wright argued that “if we vest the honor of our species in some quintessentially human feat and then defy a machine to perform it, shouldn’t it be something the average human can do? Play a mediocre game of Trivial Pursuit, say?” (Wright 140) I agree with Wright, sure a computer can whoop my butt at chess, but could it beat me at a game of Sorry or Life? Chess is a very mathematical game that not even many humans can successfully play. So why not have a computer try to beat us at games that many of us are good at? Computers have the hardest time with simple things. They can’t recognize jokes, make small talk, and can’t recognize faces. All of these things are fairly easy for us to do, which makes me question the reasoning behind some scientists. Sure a computer can play chess, but if it can’t even make small talk, like most humans can, then can it really be said to think?

Another reason Wright doesn’t believe machines are like humans is because they don’t have souls, feelings, consciousness, senses, or love. All of these things influence our behavior and how we think and act. Without these things, we would be acting like machines, not humans, which is why machines aren’t like humans. Wright uses the Turing example to prove that machines can’t think like humans. The Turing test is a test in which there is an interrogator who communicates by keyboard. Some of the “entities” are people while others are computers and the interrogator has to decide which is which. If the computer can fool the interrogator, than it is believed that it can think. To this day, no machine has passed the Turning test, so therefore no machine has been proven to be able to “think”.

Just because a computer can play chess and do hundreds of calculations in just seconds, doesn’t mean it is able to think. This just proves that it is, indeed, a machine. A calculator can do calculations quicker than I can, that doesn’t mean it can think for itself. I think scientists want to believe that they have made something that can think on its own and be a model of a human, but right now it doesn’t seem possible. We, as humans, use our feelings to help us think and make decisions. Without feelings we would be acting soulless. We wouldn’t have any reasoning to why we did things. Computers are the same way, they don’t have feelings, and therefore can’t think like a human can and reason the way we can. Maybe eventually computers will be able to think, but so far it hasn’t.

Have we been outsmarted by computers?

Can a computer be smarter than us? This seems to be a question straight from a sc-fi movie. You know, the ones where humans build a computer (machine) and try to make it “ the most sophisticated thing man-kind has ever seen!” Then by the end of the movie the computer has taken over and we are all dead. It’s cheesy, stupid and unrealistic. Or is it? It is possible for a machine to be smarter than humans? According to Minsky, it is.

            Forever scientists, mechanics, brainiacs, and computer geeks have been experimenting with machines. They all want to make a “robot” that can think and reason on it’s own. They have already come up with Wisard, which is the “first large-scale neural network” (Davidson 117). Wisard learned how to recognize face is less than 20 seconds. Does this make Wisard smarter than humans? Computers have also been made to understand language. Minsky argues tat his design is able to comprehend semantics. This is a key development for humans. Does this make his design smarter than humans?

            The answer to all of these questions is no. Even though a computer may understand semantics and even though it can do jobs faster than same of us doesn’t make it smarter than humans. Computers are built by us, set up by us, trained by us, and used by us. This makes human beings more advanced, and smarter, than the machines we build. Computers are built to help make some of our jobs easier. Whether it is recognizing cheating in casinos, fighting wars in Iraq, or giving us tasty beverages, we use machines to help us. This means that we are the ones who have to train the computer. We have to know what we want the computer to do before we can even build it. This means that no, the computer is not smarter than us. We are smarter than it because we are using it to help us.

            Computers can’t think on their own. They may be able to learn, but they can only learn what is taught to them. If we teacher a computer to pick out faces, that is what it will be good at. If we try to throw a baseball at the computer, it’s not going to catch it, and I doubt it will ever learn to catch it. Computers are not like the computers we see in Smart House, they don’t just learn by watching and can outsmart us. There isn’t one mega machine that will dominate the world because by watching humans it can talk, think, reason, drive a car, shoot a gun, and build a bomb. There is no way this will ever happen. In the end we will always outsmart the computers.

            Aleksander even says “AI people have taken theses linguistic strings and tried to present them in a computer in an unambiguous way, and have run into trouble. Very small changes in a sentence represent things that are completely different in the real world. They are unable to deal with this.” (Davidson 119) This just proves that a computer may be able to understand semantics, but even just changing around a sentence a tiny bit can confuse the computer. We are obviously the move-advanced species, and we always will be. I can’t ever see a world where computers are the alpha males, while we are running around doing what computers tell us to do. It just won’t happen.