Sunday, April 12, 2015

PLEASE READ--CLASS CANCELLED FOR MONDAY, APRIL 13TH

I deeply apologize--this is not at all what I had planned. But the weekend has been very tough personally and I feel it will be best to take some time for myself.
We will have in class essay 2 on Wednesday.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Tuesday, April 7, 2015--5:45 pm

Greetings,

below you will find a copy of essay 3 assignment, distributed and discussed in class on Monday.

English 20, Spring 2015, Instructor: C. Fraga

Out of Class Essay Assignment #3 (200 points)

Assigned: Monday, April 6

Optional Rough Draft Due: Wednesday, April 22

(reminder—even if you submit a RD, there will not be time to revise this essay after I return it to you with the final score.

Due: Monday, May 8

Requirements:

• MLA format

• If you utilize any outside sources (besides for season 1) not required) you must follow MLA format for in- text citations, Works Cited page, etc.)

At the very least, you must have a Works Cited page that lists Season 1 of Breaking Bad. (If you have viewed other seasons, you may use material from them, but be sure to be clear that your evidence IS from another season)

• Attach your Viewer’s Journal (all 7 entries) to the back of the final draft when submitting. Reminder: if a Viewer’s Journal is not submitted, 20 points will be deducted from your earned score.

Before we began viewing the first season of Breaking Bad, I assigned a Viewer’s Journal. You were to record your observations and any other notes you wished in order to eventually select a character to focus on more carefully than others. However, as we have discussed, your first few journal entries, or perhaps more than a few, might just be summary plots and notes regarding several different characters.

This Viewer’s Journal will now be a valuable source as you write your last out of class essay for this course.

Assignment:

Write an in-depth character analysis of one of the six main characters in the first season of Breaking Bad. (Walter, Sr; Skyler; Marie; Hank; Jesse; Walter, Jr.)

Your essay must include the following:

• Assertion(s) about your character

• Evidence from the episodes that support your assertions (how did you come to the conclusion(s) you did regarding this character?)

Your supportive evidence might include but is not limited to:

• what others observe/say (or don’t observe/say) about the character—either directly or in private

• the actions of the character in particular situations

• the reactions/responses of the character in particular situations

• what drives this character

• what terrifies this character

• what pleases this character

• what does this character long for

• what does this character need

Your thesis must be assertive…it is YOUR opinion as a viewer of these episodes.

· Whether or not you LIKE or DISLIKE this character is not an issue in this essay.

· Whether you LIKE or DISLIKE the series is also not an issue in this essay.

Proving to the reader that this character has the attributes (good, bad, layered, shallow) that you assert he or she has is your goal.

Keep in mind that your reading audience HAS viewed each of the seven episodes so avoid writing extensive summaries of each episode.

Your thesis might read something like this:

Once Walter learns of his terminal cancer and begins cooking meth, he appears very unstable and irresponsible; however, his behavior ultimately represents a very determined, loving, highly intelligent and moral father and husband.

or…

Marie is a very insecure and lonely woman who is unhappy and uncomfortable living in the shadows of her power-driven DEA husband and her happily married and very bright sister, Skyler.

Suggested Vocabulary for Discussing Character

adaptable daring industrious sensitive

aggressive deceitful insensitive serious

aimless dependent intelligent shallow

alert determined intolerant shrewd

ambitious dishonest jealous sincere

antagonistic disloyal kind sly

boastful disobedient lazy spiritual

bragging energetic loyal sportsmanlike

brave enthusiastic mean stubborn

capable envious mercenary studious

careful extravagant modest sympathetic

careless faultfinding observant sullen

cheerful fearless original tactful

clever frank patient temperate

commanding generous persistent thorough

conceited greedy petty thoughtless

confident helpful practical thrifty

conscientious honest presumptuous tolerant

considerate hopeful proud truthful

cooperative imaginative punctual unfriendly

courageous impatient purposeful ungracious

courteous impulsive reckless unjust

cowardly independent reliable unselfish

credulous indifferent rude vain

cruel indomitable sensible wicked

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Sunday, April 5, 2015--8:30 pm

Hello,

Below you will find the following:

Packet 6 assignment
Packet 7 assignment
Packet 8 assignment

PACKET 6: (two readings)

1. "Immigration Pros and Cons"
http://apecsec.org/immigration-reform-pros-and-cons/

2. "Pro/Con: Immigration
Moderated by Tom Sabulis

President Obama has announced that he will use his executive power to act unilaterally on immigration, allowing some five million undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. and work without the threat of deportation. His executive order followed a congressional stalemate over a bipartisan bill that was passed in the Senate but stalled in the House. Today, a local immigration lawyer and a member of the state’s immigration enforcement review board share opposing views of the president’s decision.

Necessary step to reform

By Charles H. Kuck

President Obama’s announcement Thursday certainly shook the ground in Washington, D.C. — and that is a good thing.

We have been living with a nightmarish immigration system for more than 25 years. I know this because I deal with it every single day. My clients deal with it every single day. This broken system not only limits economic growth, but destroys families, punishes businesses, clogs our courts and jails, and drives away talent from America.

The broken legal immigration system actually creates illegal immigration by not adequately providing for the supply to meet the American demand for labor, particularly in agricultural and service jobs. At this point, everyone of sane mind understands that we must do something to fix it, stop illegal immigration, stop employers from hiring undocumented workers, and use a good immigration law to support the American economy and families.

It has been more than 13 years since politicians have had a renewed push to “fix” immigration law, since George W. Bush campaigned on and promised a fix to our current immigration system. A bipartisan group of Senators passed a bill in July 2013 that would strengthen our borders, create more interior enforcement and fix the legal immigration system. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that this bill would create billions of dollars of economic activity. Yet, this common-sense solution to fixing the system has been sitting it the House of Representatives for more than 500 days without a vote.

The Congress and the Constitution give the executive branch the duty to enforce the law, and the authority to use discretion in its enforcement. Congress has also written immigration law very broadly and relies on the executive branch to interpret its frequently vague laws through regulations and policies. The Congress has also given the President only limited funds to carry out this enforcement. Yet, like every prosecutor, the President has to decide which laws to enforce, and how to enforce them with a limited budget.

As every President before him, President Obama simply announced a list of changes his administration is making in immigration regulations and policy (not laws) and enforcement, with the authority provided him by Congress.

These changes include both an incentive for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and residents to come forward and identify themselves, go through a background check, and pay a fee; in return, they receive a temporary work permit with no permanent immigration status. He also has expanded deferred action for individuals who came to the U.S. under the age of 16, who graduate from high school here. It allows them to obtain a temporary work permit, again with no permanent status. These two changes alone are estimated to affect millions of families in the United States, including several hundred thousand in Georgia. We all know these families; they are our neighbors, our friends, and the people who work with us on a daily basis.

President Obama also announced a greater focus on enforcement (which you can do when you are not deporting people for a broken tail light). This focus puts even more emphasis on the border, heightens interior enforcement, and ensures that all undocumented immigrants with serious criminal convictions are held and deported much faster. To date, illegal immigration is at its lowest level in decades. These steps will reduce it further.

The executive action adds greater flexibility to immigration regulations by allowing investors and entrepreneurs to obtain quicker legal status in the United States. The plan also increases the time period that graduating foreign students can work in the U.S., thereby helping to ease the problem of the high demand for the artificially limited H-1B visa. There are more than twenty different changes to immigration regulations and policy, all within the President’s purview, that he is modifying or extending, in an effort to ease the pain caused by the broken immigration system.

Many do not like that the President acted without Congress, particularly without the House of Representatives. Yet, Congress can very easily resolve their concerns today — or in January, before any parts of the executive action are effective — by passing an immigration bill.

We all know that you lose the right to complain when you do not offer your own solution. Perhaps President Obama’s executive action is what is needed to get Congress to finally act in concert to pass immigration legislation that works for America and its people. We can only hope.

Charles H. Kuck is an immigration attorney in Atlanta, and the former National President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

No respect for our laws

By Phil Kent

Everyone agrees that our broken immigration system needs to be fixed. But President Barack Obama’s “fix” is a blatant unconstitutional overreach of executive power which undermines the rule and law, and serves as a magnet for more illegal immigration.

His executive order “deferring” deportation for approximately five million illegal aliens — which means giving them work permits and Social Security numbers, as well as allowing them driver’s licenses — will encourage more illegal crossings through porous border areas.

Americans have seen it before. After all, experience is a great teacher. Ask U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. He voted for the 1986 so-called “Immigration Control and Reform Act” based on the promise of a “fix.” But since it granted amnesty to millions of illegals first and promised border security and employer sanctions that never occurred, the senator admits he was “completely fooled.”

Let’s not be fooled again.

Our past president didn’t enforce some immigration laws and our current president not only doesn’t enforce laws, he “waives” parts of laws that he doesn’t like through executive fiat. Obama’s main justification for his order is that “Congress failed to act.” That’s not true. Congress did not fail to act. It chose not to act in granting such a massive amnesty. That’s the way our republic is supposed to work.

Greg Jarrett, a lawyer and Fox News analyst, cites three compelling reasons why the Obama order is illegal:

• It is a distortion of “prosecutorial discretion.” In past decisions the U.S. Supreme Court has cautioned the executive branch that executive orders may not be used to adopt a sweeping policy of non-enforcement of the law. Such discretion has applied only to decisions not to prosecute or expel specific individuals or small groups of people. Furthermore, Obama is bestowing this blanket amnesty not for reasons allowed by law, but for reasons purely political. He wants these low-wage illegals to remain here permanently, hoping that in the future they and their children will be voting predominantly for Democrats.

• It is a usurpation of legislative authority. The Supreme Court has declared that Congress has “plenary power” (meaning full and complete) to regulate immigration. Derived from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the doctrine is based on the concept that immigration is a question of national security, relating to a nation’s right to regulate border policy. Yet this is usurped by a unilateral presidential directive.

• It breaches a president’s sworn duty. Article II, Section 3 requires that a president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Current law specifically requires the deportation of illegal aliens when apprehended. A president cannot ignore or nullify such a law.

Consider what this executive order does, if not overturned or defunded.

• Most of the five million illegal aliens may stay permanently. It may be next to impossible to remove these “temporary” deferrals. It will depend on who the next president is.

• The “legalized” illegals, with their work permits, would compete directly in the job market with Americans — 40 million of whom are unemployed.

• By giving work permits to millions of low-skilled workers, many with limited English skills, wages will be depressed.

Consider, too, the impact of this new order on all 50 states. A 2010 study revealed that the burden of supporting illegal immigration with public benefits costs just Georgia taxpayers $2.4 billion annually (a figure that includes U.S. citizen children of illegal aliens). The taxpayer tab for the nation as a whole, according to Fox News business analyst Stuart Varney, is $113 billion a year — with most going to education and healthcare. With more potential illegal immigrants planning to sneak across our borders to enjoy everything from schooling to healthcare courtesy of Uncle Sap, the added costs are incalculable.

What would real immigration reform mean? First, repealing this damaging executive order either through a successful lawsuit or through the new Congress defunding as much of its expenditures as possible. Real reform also means enhanced border and internal enforcement, fixing the exit-entry visa system so we know who enters and leaves (to assist in thwarting terrorists like the Boston bombers) and streamlining our guest worker programs so that, if no American is displaced, a temporary foreign employee can fill the job.

Finally, think of the message this Obama decree sends to the world. How can we expect foreigners to respect our immigration laws if our own president doesn’t respect them?

Phil Kent is a member of the Georgia Immigration Enforcement Review Board.

******************************

PACKET 7: (two readings)

1. "The Deadliest Trip in America? Desperate Search after Immigrants Die in Desert."
by Isabel C. Morales, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/17/us/immigrant-desert-deaths-dna/index.html

2. "This Single Reform would Improve the U.S. Immigration System and Grow the Economy"
by Herbie Ziskend
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/herbie-ziskend/green-card-recapture_b_6984076.html?utm_hp_ref=immigration-reform

PACKET 8: (one reading)

1. "They Take our Jobs" -- Debunking Immigration Myths"
http://www.seiu.org/a/immigration/they-take-our-jobs-debunking-immigration-myths.php

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Tuesday, March 31st--3:45 pm

Hello, just a quick note to let you know that there will be class tomorrow.
I am feeling back to "normal" and again, I apologize for having to cancel classes on Monday so suddenly.
We will have the Writing Response as scheduled as well as the Group Work from Monday.

Monday, March 30, 2015

PLEASE READ IMMEDIATELY--Monday, March 30th

Good morning,
I have been fighting huge waves of nausea since very early this morning.
I have always prided myself on VERY rarely missing class due to illness.
I apologize for this huge inconvenience.
Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to make it to my classes today.
Take care and have a positive, safe day.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Sunday, March 29th, 2015--5:45 pm

Greetings,

I hope you have enjoyed this last week from attending classes.
Below you will find Packet 5 assignment.
You will be utilizing this article and another that I will distribute in class on Wednesday for your in class Writing Response.

PACKET 5

I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why.

by Kyle Wiens | 8:02 AM July 20, 2012

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss’s more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar “stickler.” And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I have a “zero tolerance approach” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have “zero tolerance.” She thinks that people who mix up their itses “deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave,” while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.

Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,” their applications go into the bin.

Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world’s largest online repair manual, and Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we’ve made a preemptive strike against groan-worthy grammar errors.

But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn’t make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.

Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn’t in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use “it’s,” then that’s not a learning curve I’m comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

Grammar signifies more than just a person’s ability to remember high school English. I’ve found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.

In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. You see, at its core, code is prose. Great programmers are more than just code monkeys; according to Stanford programming legend Donald Knuth they are “essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms.” The point: programming should be easily understood by real human beings — not just computers.

And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil’s in the details. In fact, when it comes to my whole business, details are everything.

I hire people who care about those details. Applicants who don’t think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren’t important. And I guarantee that even if other companies aren’t issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.

That’s why I grammar test people who walk in the door looking for a job. Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they’re detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.

Read the summary of the #HBRchat on Twitter based on this blog post.

More blog posts by Kyle Wiens

More on: Business writing, Communication, Personal effectiveness

KYLE WIENS

Kyle Wiens is CEO of iFixit, the largest online repair community, as well as founder ofDozuki, a software company dedicated to helping manufacturers publish amazing documentation.