The UVSC newspaper had an article today titled "Wellness Education wants you to "Break Free" from smoking. Although I'm not a smoker myself, it annoys me to see the constant demonization of people who happen to have become addicted to inhaling smoke. Truth be told, the constant cigarette breaks drive glass shards under my fingernails, but at least they make decent conversationalists. I defend smoking just as I defend any consensual crime. I feel that we have the right to do anything we want to our bodies and minds; It is not the business of the government, in any instance.

What strikes me about the headline is the wording. We want you to "Break Free" from smoking. I can't help but see "Break Free" as a subliminal idea that enhances corporate conscription. For centuries, it seems, workers have demanded what is now a time honored "smoke break." The "Break Free" organization seems to be trying to infuse the idea of skipping that break. I have always been envious of the smokers and their 5 minute breaks, and it is a good behavior. I worked for eBay for 2.5 years, and we had productivity experts come in and give chats from time to time. A consistent message was that regular breaks helped productivity, worker morale, and overall happiness. The problem is, of course, that if you simply go take a break you can be identified as lazy. However, if you have a cigarette between your fingertips you are awarded immunity. A double standard? Maybe, but it seems to be tacit law. But this new "Break Free" campaign is, in my opinion, a move to whittle away at the heartwood of the smoke break. It serves to keep employees working, working, working, to leave no nook for the nicotine crook.

The article cites the website http://www.quitnet.com/, which is full of quirky and clever expressions such as "quit all together," which definitely does conjure up images of clapping lumberjacks, so they are not alone in their fight against the "nicodemon."

What really gets me, though, is the phone number. 1-888-567-TRUTH. Yeah, I'm not naive enough to know that anytime people use the word "truth" they are usually trying to deceive you. It's not hard to see through when you watch anti-smoking commercials. They are filled with eggageration and appeals to emotion. A recent anti-smoking campaign shows children who lick the soles of dirty shoes; smoking is is the same sort of fetish. I guess antismokers can't think of any good reasons other than blatant lies to neuter the nicotine "nightmare."

I got the piece below in the UVSC newspaper, but they omitted all of my carefully placed italics, so here it is in full.

Advertisers have never been strict adherents to English grammar, and often intentionally misshape phrases to make them catchier. You may be familiar with Pepsi’s recent slogan, “Drink Pepsi, Everyday,” a spin-off from an older “Toyota, everyday” slogan. Everyday, as one word, is synonymous with commonplace or ordinary. There is a similar phenomenon in our campus halls. Military recruiters sit behind a booth which reads, “Linguists Wanted. Outsmart Badguys!,” as do their t-shirts.

Intentional errors like this have had a lot of success for many reasons. The linguist Geoffrey Nunberg identifies the uproar over Winston cigarettes on release of the jingle, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” It should say “good as a cigarette should.” Nit-picky? Maybe, but they did receive a lot of negative publicity. As any advertiser knows, all publicity is good publicity. Winston furthered the campaign with: “What do you want, good grammar or good taste?” matched by other companies with slogans such as “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch.” The outrage of pedantic linguists could then put the offense on the front page.

What then is the military’s intent? Might makes right? Are they trying to say they are so desperately in need of linguists that they can scarcely manage a legible ad? However, the recruiters don’t even seem to grasp that “Badguys” should be two words. My comments were met with perplexity. But I can’t believe it was an unintentional error at the top; the grammar was ultimately deliberate. It makes an interesting lesson for the college campus: English class teaches the rules of the English language, because only then can we break them.

Labels: Rants, Writing

Christie's english blog

I'm just browsing the student blogs and I came across this one. The assignment actually wasn't a "free topic", (we were supposed to write on 'what makes a good class') but still, the content is.. interesting.

Comments?

I work as a typist for UVSC and so I have had the opportunity of observing quite a few classroom envirnments from multiple perspectives. For example, I am taking four classes myself and I type for an additional seven. I've been doing that for the last two years. We know that a class can be a little like an individual organism--some are timid, others are tired, a few are competitive, and sometimes they are hostile. That is not to say that there are not great classes, but there are a lot more varied reasons why a classroom can fail rather than succeed. I usually go into a classroom selfishly; other people learning is not my priority. My main focus is on me. Therefore, my criteria are as such:

I need a challenge. I am at school for more than just a degree. I'm not here to simply slide through classes. I want teachers that do not put up with mediocre work, from myself or my classmates.

I don't want be punished for holding an opinion. I think that a professor is obligated to let students know that the classroom is open to scrutiny, argument, or opposing opinion.

Professor's need to constantly be on guard of "intellectually bullying." I think this usually forms from laziness or insecurity. Professors that know their subject need to be able to remove themselves from their own opinions. Professors can fall into using their expertise to debase students and become competitive with them.

Personality - personality matters. This can take the form of humor, charisma, vocal quality, presense, etc.

Classmates - Smart classmates make me want to challenge myself. Competition, diversity, and extroverted personalities make classes memorable experiences.

I am currently taking a class that has proven pretty difficult. The lectures are essentially rants, the arguments full of contradictions, and, when I've pointed them out, I have been shot down. (I'd say his name but I still need to try and get a decent grade out of the class :) I have tried to look at the class as a challenge; I've been researching double time to see if I can challenge him. I kind of like it, but I'm not sure if I will be penalized because of this. We have not had any real tests. It seems our entire grade depends on a take-home test. I know that my task will be 10 times as hard as those that simply agree with him. I'll have to establish page after page of axioms, and I probably won't get a good grade in the class because I know I don't want to simply sit there and be indoctrinized.

That's not to say that my experiences are all bad. Most of my professors have been amazing. I shop around though. I try to get as many references from multiple people as I can to find challenging professors. I had a really amazing class last semester in the Philosophy Honors class with Dennis Potter. Probably 6-7 kids didn't really fit the honors qualification, but they stuck through and everyone became involved. The class worked because there were about 5 strong personalities (including the professor) and we all learned a lot from one another. The less vocal students got excited and became involved as well.

The weight is definitely not all in the hand of the professor. Classmates play a large roll in creating a classroom environment that is stimulating, challenging, and memorable.

For any of you who are in the class, I'm sure that you have run into the annoyance of not knowing when other people update their blogs. Personally, I like communities such as these, but it's hard to keep up. Nobody wants to click through the entire list on Ben's main page to see if anything's changed. That's why I've done a little research into programs that will check this for you. I've been testing one such program out during the last week and found that it works great. I've noticed that maybe 2-3 updated their blog Wednesday, NOBODY during Thursday, about 6 or 7 on Sunday, and 13 so far today (although there'll surely be many that post in the quickly disappearing minutes before 12:00). I'm not sure how Ben keeps up on all of us, and so maybe he has another solution, but this has been working for me and so I thought I'd share it if anyone is interested. The program is called Web Checker.

Once you get it, you can add Ben's page and then set it to a search depth of 2. This will check all of Ben's links, so you won't even need to manually add them in yourself. The program is shareware, but you can... um... click on this link for a program to remove that pesky limitation. Thank goodness this isn't Ethics and Values! Although it has almost no options, it's a useful little program.

But, on a personal note... I want to say that writing is a little bit like looking in the mirror. You never know what the reflection says to other people. Sometimes you focus on all the blemishes, and other times you see a shining hero. It's a tragedy to never know what other people are thinking. We try to find out our entire lives, but never really truly know. This is why I'm terrified when I observe other people's habits that I shiver about. I see it all inside myself. It's 14 till 12, goodnight :)

I've been reading over all the blogs of my classmates and was caught by an idea that Sequota posted. The theme of her composition was on the idea of respect, a concept that escapes easy definition. It's one of those questions your humanities professor will let your class tread on until you find you'll need a semester of work to gain an inkling. If I try to deconstruct the word myself, I can see Re—which usually signifies repetition, and spect—which seems to come from the word spectate, or 'to look.' The online etymological dictionary says pretty much the same thing, that respect derives from "re- 'back' + specere 'look at." It continues with some history, The verb is 1542, from the noun. Meaning 'treat with deferential regard or esteem." I think my own interpretation can make just as much sense, because if we take the time to look at someone more than once, we will hopefully avoid being the opposite of 'respectful,' that ugly beast "prejudice." Prejudice means to judge previous the event of encountering something, or, to not even "look at" in the first place.

Sequota seems to have been on the ups and downs of respect. She even confides in us that "sometimes I have discriminated," even though "[she has] been discriminated against" herself. Recently Sequota was involved in a confrontation with a "higher authority figure in the educational department." It seems that the conflict arose over the lack of respect given to Native Americans during a film, after the professor blamed a tribe for a scene discontinuity. It seems the filming had to be relocated to a non sacred-burial-ground site. In language that sounds more reminiscent of my junior high P.E. coach, the professor made light of Sequota's response, twice asking her "why [she] was making a big deal out of it."

I don't think many of us would defend this professor, and I think I could easily find myself in a throng of offended citizens banging on their door, pitchfork in hand. So Sequota, I understand that you may wish to do the better thing, in your words, "But then I realized that I needed to be the one to make differences," but please, for our sake—at least give us the name and address of this buffoon.


Also, go check out these prejudice tests on MSN. It seems that I am prejudice against fat people, but not against political candidates, even if one of the candidates is George W. Bush. Amazing!