7 December 2010 Final Project

Love: A Science?

Fig. 1

Biologically, we as humans are wired to do certain things such as flirt, court, and pair off. We each have a love map that works as a template for what “arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another” (Fisher 304).  These maps lead us to have tendencies to want to pair with one particular person: “Pair- bonding is a trademark of the human animal” (306). Throughout time, people have always been intrigued by, have desired, or have possessed love. In Brownlee's essay, "Can't Do Without Love: What Science Says About Those Tender Feelings," she says that ". . . love is central to human existence" (Brownlee 295). Love is written into us; it is a part of us biologically and is related to our genotype, with phenotypic characteristics, such as flirting, courting, and pairing off.

Fig. 2

When women flirt, they demonstrate many behavioral characteristics signaling that they are attracted to a potential mate. This is not exclusive to women of a single culture either, “Women from places as different as the jungles of Amazonia, the salons of Paris, and the highlands of New Guinea apparently flirt with the same sequence of expressions” (Fisher 300). Women primarily smile and lift their eyebrows; this is often followed by her tilting her head and looking aside. Many scientists believe that these physical behaviors are innate and show signs of sexual interest (300). Men alike have outward displays of interest, they often thrust their chest; many of their displays seem to display dominance, but often times it is representing his interest in courting a woman.

Fig. 3

Courting plays an essential role in the mating process, and it is said that, “Romantic attraction in humans and its antecedent in other mammalian species play a primary role; this neural mechanism motivates individuals to focus their courtship energy on specific others, thereby conserving valuable time and metabolic energy, and facilitation mate choice” (Aron, Brown, Fisher 2173). Courtship is a biological key to falling in love and “Normally people woo each other slowly” (Fisher 303). Through courting, women know if a man is able to provide, and it is also key to reproductive functioning.

Courting leads to pairing off exclusively which leads people to the decision to be married. Looking at it from a biological perspective, it is said that,

Data on mate choice among mammals suggests that this behavioral ‘attraction system’ is associated with dopaminergic reward pathways in the brain. It has been proposed that this intense romantic love, a human cross-cultural universal, is a developed form of this attraction system. (Aron, Brown, Fisher 2173)

 Fisher says about American mating specifically, “We marry for love and to accentuate, balance out, or make parts of our private selves” (Fisher 308). In other words, we biologically mate to complete ourselves and to propagate more of our genes, not for economic, political, or family reasons. We learn about what we need to complete ourselves through courting and flirting, however, we are unconscious of it, because we are simply biologically steered.

Fig. 4

Universally, humans biologically posses a genotype that their phenotype exemplifies by unconsciously seeking for a mate to pair off with. In regards to mating or sexual selection, Darwin, ". . . regarded this phenomenon . . . as a central aspect to intersexual selection, the type of sexual selection by which individuals of one sex evolve traits that attract members of the opposite sex" (Aron, Brown, Fisher 2173). These evolved traits that Darwin is talking about are evident in our outward dispositions. Our somas are biologically engineered to fall in love. Initially we flirt with others whom we are sexually attracted to, flirting leads to courting, and courting leads to mating which we define as love; all of this is driven by biology: "Mammalian . . . species have evolved many physical and behavioral characteristics by means of mate choice" (2178). Biology has evolved so our genotype causes our phenotype to illustrate certain tendencies in relation to mating. When we take away all the roses and chocolates, fancy dates, and big weddings, we find love is ultimately a science. 

Click here for works cited: Works Cited

Amber Crouch’s Greatest Hits!

Amber, I really enjoyed through your blog. I felt you had many interesting opinions and thoughts on the topics that we covered throughout the semester. In your “Marrying to get Divorced” post, I thought your ideas were worthy to take note of. They differed from my personal reasons, but I saw valid reasons in the post to support your claims, and it really got me thinking as a reader about my opinions.

Your directed freewrite on government control contained, although semi radical ideas, interesting and ones that I feel could be supported. You could take this piece and write it from an academic standpoint, and I think you would have a great and strong piece. Finding evidence for your claim would not be difficult, and outside sources would extremely help validate where you personally stand. Your post on materialism was the post that I felt had your best developed ideas, with supporting claims to back up the point you were trying to get across. I also noticed this was one of your longer posts, so I think by elongating your other posts, you would achieve this same thing. One of your best summaries was found in “Natural Behavior in Animals.” I also enjoyed reading the rebuttals that you had to what the author in that piece said.

Overall, in your posts I felt you showed very strong voice as a writer. It was clear how you felt in your posts and where you stood. I think this is a great strength you have. Several writers might use a lot of fancy words, but they lack voice, which makes their work seem empty. I also noticed that you have improved as a writer throughout the course, and that is something to be commended on. Your writing became clearer and your ideas more developed throughout. I think you could do just about any previous post for your final project and do a great job.

Good luck with the rest of your semester and with this class! I hope everything goes well for you.

Jessica

Morgan Paulson’s Greatest Hits!

I really enjoyed reading through your blog. You had many interesting ideas presented in your posts. I felt your “Is the Study of Consciousness Scientific?” post was very well written technical piece. Your writing exemplified great precision and portrayed much intelligence on your part. A post that was a good example of a well done summary was your post “Can Machines Think?” It was a well organized post and fluid throughout. You had a lot of technical, researched points, but you also had many intriguing ideas of your own. I liked your “High-heel Madness” post, as well. This was not as advance written as your other posts, but I liked it because you had a lot of voice. It gave insight into who you are as a person and what you are like, something that is not seen in your other scholarly posts.

I feel your “Out of Capitalism Emerges Gay Identity” post offers a great framework for your final project possibly. You have a strong, valid case and could easily add to that by finding other outside sources to validate your argument. You already have the foundation for a good essay. In the post entitled “Immigration and cultural music trends,” you say you disagree with the author, Lipsitz, throughout your post. I think it would be interesting to see what you think the influence of music does to women in particularly, what message it sends to them and possibly to the demographic that you feel that you fit in to. I think this post has a lot of room to grow. Especially if you develop it like I said, what music says to women in your demographic. From your post, I gathered that you probably have a lot of opinions about this, and I guarantee that you could find evidence to back up whatever your claim is. Also, with our final project, we have to have media and visual elements, and this post would be a great one to do that with. I noticed in a few of your first posts that you had improper MLA in-text citations, but these were improved and fixed in your middle posts and carried out through your later posts, so great job on that.

You have many strengths as I writer that I personally saw. Once thing I would like to commend you on is your excellent word choice throughout all of your blogs. You used a variety of words and also more complex words to get your point across. I think this showed credibility to your writings and also emphasized that you know what you are talking about. Another thing I wanted to extol you for is how exceptionally well you develop your ideas. None of your posts were just one short, little paragraph. They were all well thought out posts. You presented your ideas in the opening paragraph and did a superb job of developing and proving your point with the rest of your post.

Once again I enjoyed reading your blog. Good luck with the rest of your semester and I hope all goes well for you!

Jessica

9 November 2010: Week 12 Blog Reviews

Lauren Spencer:

“George Orwell Said it Best”

I liked your great use of referencing a past work in relation to your own ideals. This is one of my favorite novels and I found it extremely intriguing, and like you, applicable to today.  I thought it was clever of you to use it to open your post and then go in to how it relates to your own ideas. You have very strong opinions, but they are not pushy onto the reader, so good job with that.  1984 is a book title, so make sure you underline it. Also, you need commas in quite a few places, so watch for that and also watch using the word ‘you’ in a paper.

“Rollin’ in the Benjamins”

I enjoyed your opening and how it led up to your next paragraph about finance being about more than just wanting money and you went into more explicit detail. I think adding quotes from the text would really strengthen what you want to say. Be careful with your tenses, I noticed a few spots where you went back and forth between past and present; be fluid throughout.

Darien Allen

“Centralized Government: The Good, Bad, or the Ugly?”

            I really enjoyed the quotes you used to back up what you were saying; they added validity to your point. I felt you had a good argument and even if I personally do not agree with where you might stand, you argued your case well and as a reader I understood the basis for it. This was a well written piece. I think you could expand on it for our next essay and have a good piece of work. I agree with you as well that there are too many variables to consider to truly be able to judge what is best for a government and country.

On a side note: Your last words totally reminded me of the 7^th Harry Potter book, “for the greater good” (probably because I just re read itJ ).

“The Evolution of Finance”

I agree with you that this was really hard to read (and actually kind of boring to me), but despite that, I felt you did a good job summarizing and hitting all the main points of the piece. You were able to put everything much simpler to where the reader can understand it. So I would say good summarization for such a difficult piece.

4 November 2010: Page 455 Directed Freewrite

Discipline of Finance

Money. All over the world people use some form of exchange in order to trade goods and in a majority of cultures, money is used to make and regulate these trades. Everyone needs money to live and also so they can experience certain enjoyments in life. Not only do people need money; they want it. The desire to have money, and a lot of it, is one characteristic of western cultures. Due to this need and this desire that our culture has, the discipline of finance emerged, a field absolutely necessary in our world and economy today.

            Finance is studying how money is acquired and invested. People have predictive behaviors in relation to some things. Finance tries to predict these behaviors and translate it into mathematical descriptions. The world of finance emerged directly after World War II. Since the end of that war to the place we are now, our society has experienced extreme advancements in technology. World War II helped the United States get out of debt due to the large amount of factories that produced weapons and machinery for the war effort. This boosted the economy in a way that had never been seen before. After the war, the economy was at an all time high; people realized. When people have money, they want more. Hence, investing was created. Also since that time, copious amounts of businesses have opened, with the myriad of businesses, money needed to be better managed, thus came the emergence of finance.

Due to all of these changes, the practitioners of finance were able to find their way into the world of academics. The reason for this was due to the large number of jobs that were able to be created due to the advances made. These jobs require training and knowledge, things that can be obtained through academic training. Prior to entering the work field, people pursing this field need a background of what this field is and need to understand it before entering it. The academic world does this, thus the discipline easily carves a niche for itself in the academic world, a niche that is essential.

In the tumultuous world that we live in, finance is essential to understanding business, which is what our culture is built on, corporate America. It has created jobs and expanded our understanding of the one thing we need to live, money. 

2 November 2010: Directed Freewrite

Balance in the States

When anything is taken to an extremity, there are drawbacks and overall negative results. Taking an extreme position on any view, leads to a close mindedness in a person, that does not allow them to shift from their point; they are set in his or her ways and do not want to vary from that. With complete government control, people cannot form their own beliefs. They are restricted on the basis that when they enter into this world, much of what they can and cannot do is already outlined for them. They have many rules and values pushed on and forced into them by the society they are born in to. They never get to completely gain their own set of beliefs, and values. On the opposite side of the stratus, are people who believe in little or no government control. If this were the case, many things and ideas would spin out of control without an intervention from another party. My view lies in the middle of the two extremities of the continuum of government control.

I have a firm belief that the focus of what the government can control should be contained and determined primarily by each individual state, with little intervention at the national level. Each state should govern their people and make rules based on the needs of the people in that particular state. By doing this, people can choose to live in the state that most closely represents their beliefs and lifestyle. Everyone then can be free to choose where they live and what laws and regulations they want to abide by. There would be no national government restriction on everybody. This is originally how the United States was set up to operate. The founding fathers wanted to leave things up to each state to determine. We see traces of this still being the case in our society, but overall, every issue seems to end up at the national level. We as a country have largely drifted from this model, and I personally see many negative impacts because of it. The laws in Arizona should and need to be different than laws say in Nebraska. The demographic of people in both of those states vary immensely, and so the laws that govern them should be different also.

Think of all the issues that face our country right now. Abortion, immigration, homosexual marriage, the list continues on and on. Currently, each state is able to choose where they stand, but then these issues all end up at the national level, with everyone wanting to amend the overall constitution. If each state was able to contain a large part of government control, then each state could come up with their own things they want to control.

Strong communities lead to strong nations.  That is what we need to go back to and by returning to more of a focus on a state based government, I feel we would be a stronger nation. I believe my stand, which directly reflects the stand that the United States was built on, is a balance of the two extremes. People are still under government control, but they get to choose how much, and what they want to be controlled. It is choice and having a choice is freedom.  

Week 11 Blog Reviews: 2 November 2010

Lauren Spencer

“Material World”

I like how you portrayed your view of materialism. You put it well that we can buy things and have things, as long as it is reasonable and within our means. If you wanted to use this post for a future paper, you could use the idea you brought up about the state our country is in today and expand on that in relation to your ideas. I think you could have a lot to say and have a lot of information to back up your claims.

A few things, in your opening sentence, you need to close the quote with quotations, probably just a typo. Also the sentence “So why not spend money you can't take with you on things that you can't take with you” needs to be restructured to make more sense. There were a few other little grammar details such as commas that need to be put in as well. Great job!

“America: The Melting Pot”

I really enjoyed the way you phrased this sentence “I think the same thing applies for people; "don't judge a person based on their stereotype".” You used a great comparison to the judging a book by its cover. This is a good post, that could be even better if you could expand on the way that these people have influenced and benefited the United States. You spend a lot of time describing the stereotypes, then at the very end you throw in a few things that are good. You have a lot of good ideas in this paper.

You do not need apostrophes here to make them plural “burrito's, taco's.” Also, you need a question mark at the end of this sentence and a comma after the work ‘this’: “Having said this do you feel as though your culture has been misinterpreted.” Those are just a few grammar suggestions (I know, can’t you totally tell I am going to be an English teacher. J ) that I noticed. Overall , I enjoyed both of your posts. Great ideas!

Darien Allen

“Materialism: A Meaning Response”

This is an incredibly well written essay. The opening was different than what I would have expected, but I liked you connected it to anthropology and it tied in perfectly to what your paper was about. I love your word choice throughout. I also, like your examples of the tattoo and handbag for modern examples; they were relatable and identifiable.

Your second to last paragraph ends with a colon and not a period. Also, your last paragraph is in a different font. These are probably just little typos, but if you revise this post for an essay, I wanted you to be aware of them. J Excellent post!

“China’s Varying Influence”

Good post on Chinese Immigrants. I saw at the end how you kind of had an outline for expanding this post into a full blown essay. I was going to suggest to you to expand on how they influence the economy, then I saw it in your outline J. I think this is a good start to what could be a good essay, possibly for the next one that is due. Looking at your outline, you have a clear direction where you want to take this and ideas for it.

One thing I would suggest is maybe to take out the part that there is no policy like the one we have for Hispanic immigrants today. As a reader, I felt that was a little of topic from the point you were trying to make about Chinese immigrants, but that is just my suggestion. Overall, great start.