Dough Writing
Writing, to many, is not seen as a technology. This everyday, innate, task is easily over looked especially in today’s modern world of high tech computers, cameras, phones, and palm pilots. It’s hard to imagine at one time people actually invented this thing called the alphabet, somehow made each letter represent a certain sound, then by combining this with other letters and sounds made words. But someone did and we, as a society, forget that and take writing for granted. We do not think about writing or its intricacies when we are in the act of writing. This is partially due to the availability of writing utensils and other materials needed to perform the task. What happens though when those things are taken away from us?
Set about with this task, to write something without using any form of writing technology including pencils, pens, paintbrushes, and paper, I have found a new respect for writing, and the tools used to write with. I saw this as the intended outcome, but what surprised me was the amount of thought and planning the writing took. Not thinking of what to write, but instead how to write it, not with which materials, but how to actually shape the letters to make them legible.
Once given this assignment I began thinking about nature and came up with my first course of action: a piece of bark with carbon writing on it from a burnt stick. This sounded great, how easy, then I realized I live in an apartment with no trees around. I thought about going to my friends and taking materials from their trees but when I tried the snow and rain from the past week had made everything very wet and hard to work with. The bark was too moldy or malleable and the sticks were too damp to light on fire. I had to find another way.
My next idea was to make paper and write with charcoal or carbon on that. I had done this before in elementary school and remembered it to be quite easy. We had made a lot of paper for nature journals so I felt it appropriate for this assignment. I had everything ready to go, the blender, berries to make the paper pretty, water, flour, and a stick.
Boardman, Phillip C. "Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)." Enduring Legacies: Ancient and Medieval Cultures. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Custom Pub., 2000. 430-54. Print.
Hinds, Maurene J. Witchcraft on Trial: From the Salem Witch Hunts to the Crucible. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
The Salem witch trials transpired in the late 1600’s and caused uncertainty and controversy throughout the society. The town of Salem is where most of the trials occurred, and practicing witchcraft, and our American government forced over a dozen citizens to pay with their lives. The witch trials happened because of conflicts dealing with religion, fear, and feuds. The trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of adolescent girls claimed to be possessed by the devil and they accused several local women of witchcraft. A wave of hysteria spread throughout Massachusetts, and a special court place was set up to hear the cases. During the Salem witch trials “nineteen were hung on Gallows Hill, a 71-year-old man was pressed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and nearly 200 people, overall, had been accused”(Wigfall, Lyric).The first condemned witch, Bridget Bishop, hung in June and eighteen others followed. A man named Giles Corey, pressed to death with stones for not pleading guilty or not guilty, also condemned. One hundred and fifty more men, women, and children indicted over the next several months because of accusations. The puritan religion arguably caused a breaking point in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, which lead to the persecution of twenty innocent people. The Salem witch trials affected the American culture with the horrendous events that occurred during 1692.
Toswell, M.J. "Chaucer's Pardoner, Chaucer's World, Chaucer's Style: Three Approaches to Medieval Literature." College Literature 28.3 (2001): 155. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.
To better understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to understand the time period in which the accusations of witchcraft occurred. There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village fanatics, and rivalry with nearby Salem Town all played a part in the stress. There was also a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of an attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. Soon prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem.
The witch trials of the late 1600's were full of controversy and uncertainty. The Puritan town of Salem was home to most of these trials, and became the center of much attention in 1692. More than a hundred innocent people were found guilty of practicing witchcraft during these times, and our American government forced over a dozen to pay with their lives. The main reasons why the witch trials occurred were conflicts dealing with politics, religion, family, economics, and fears of the citizens.
Technology is not killing our ability to write, but it is reviving it and pushing our literacy to new directions. Andrea Lunsford, from Stanford University, conducted an experiment to scrutinize college students way of writing. Her results were alarming, "I think we are in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization." Lunsford discovered that only 38% of students writing occurred within the classroom, the rest was written in their own free time. Most of our socializing now takes place online and always involves text or writing. Before the Internet, most of our communication was verbal. The only time Americans wrote was for a school assignment and if their job required writing. Otherwise most people didn't write another paragraph once they left
In the small town of Salem, Massachusetts the fear of devil worshipers and witchcraft spread through the town like wild fire. In the years of 1692 and 1963 men and women accused of witchcraft were gathered up and imprisoned or killed. 200 men, women, and children were accused of witchcraft and there were at least 20 deaths . The majority were hung but there was one man that was pressed to death, and four known deaths in prisons. The rest of the accused were thrown in jail for months with out trials . The Salem Witch Trials were brought up by the belief of the supernatural, a recent smallpox epidemic, and fears from being attacked from the Native Americans, and longstanding rivalry with other town’s people. They were also fueled by their fear of outsiders and the suspicions and resentment of their neighbors. The trials were the start of something bigger that happened. The events that took place in Salem in 1692 are a part of a greater pattern throughout our history to persecute innocent people, especially women, as "witches."
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the summer and into the fall of the year 1692, and during this dark time of American history, over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft and put in jail. Twenty of these accused were executed; nineteen of them were found guilty and were put to death by hanging. One refused to plead guilty, so the villagers tortured him by pressing him with large stones until he died. The Salem Witch Trials was an infamous, scary time period in American history that exhibited the amount of fear people had of the devil and the supernatural; the people of this time period accused, arrested, and executed many innocent people because of this fear, and there are several theories as to why the trials happened (Brooks).
Okigbo, R., Iwube, J., & Putheti, R. (2011). An extensive review on genetically modified (GM) foods
That is why cursive should still be taught in schools, along with keyboarding skills. Technology is exponentially growing and it is important for children to be knowledgeable about computers, but that doesn’t mean they should ignore the written word. Students should have a choice whether to write in cursive or print, but first they must be exposed to it. They might have trouble remembering how many humps an “m” and “n” have or think that slanting the page is superfluous, but if cursive is omitted, they won’t get to experience cursive and come to love it, or hate it. Things can be said about cursive, but it can’t be said that there are disadvantages to learning it. Why then get rid of something that wasn’t damaging in the first place?
Scientists have been changing genomes of plants and animals by integrating new genes from a different species through genetic engineering, creating a genetically modified organism (GMO). Consumers in America have been eating GMOs since 1996, when they went on the market. There are benefits to genetically modifying crop plants, as it improves the crop quality and increases yield, affecting the economy and developing countries. But there are also negative effects from GMOs. Consumption of GMOs has various health effects on both body systems of animals and humans. GMOs also affect the environment, ecosystems and other animal species. The cons outweigh the pros in the case of GMOs.
Throughout history, writing has had many various uses that have helped record information from history to the present day. Writing has obtained many different uses as to how and what we use writing today. When writing was formed in 3200 B.C. it was used to record and communicate. We have since then used writing for numerous issues such as recording information in which we may learn about the past, and for poetry or literature for people, both children and adults, to read and learn from. People throughout history and today even use writing for religious reasons such as writing out a prayer to God or even taking note on what has happened or talked of in the sermon.
Operating the largest machine in the world won’t be essay. The collider has two functions, it is to accelerate particles to high speeds in a beam that is about 2mm wide and then to direct the beams to the heart of the collider, where the head-on collision takes place. The particles that the Hadron collider accelerates are protons and lead nuclei; these have positive charges and so can be steered by magnets. These super magnets (9,300 in total) are used to control and steer the particles as they make their way around the 27km loop of the Large Hadron Collider. The Hadron Collider actually has two beams which travel opposite to each other so two sets of protons can travel towards each other. At the heart of the collider, the two beams meet for a brief moment, and that’s where the things go bang! This is where the explosion takes place and where the scientist, can try to find new elements.
It is difficult to escape the influence of technology on modern life. It lurks behind every door: the classroom, home, office, and store. There are many who are resistant to new technology, saying that technology causes harm to society. These claims are often made without the realization that technology also includes important and indispensable parts in their life such as writing and the tools for writing. Writing was one of the first technologies invented. Technology has now become so entrenched in the majority of cultures around the world that it is hard to imagine a life or society without writing. For those that maintain a majority of technology beyond writing is harmful, imagine the difficulty in writing without the help of other technologies, which includes pencils, paper, computers, printing presses, and a number of other technological aids.