What I learned in Comm41

There was a multitude of different subjects we went over in this class that helped me enhance my writing skills. Overall I feel this class was a great asset to my San Jose State education. We learned everything from how emotion affects judgement, when evidence is valid, why arguments persuade you, and most importantly critical thinking. Critical thinking is very important, it is a collection of skills we use everyday that are necessary for our full intellectual and personal development. Critical thinking requires learning how to think rather than what to think. Also, reasoning was a great subject learned. Reason is the process of supporting a claim or conclusion on the basis of evidence. It involves both the use of intelligence and the application of rules for problem solving.

Mission:Critical

My first thought of the website was that its confusing and hard to figure out where to go and too many links all over the place. But once I started playing around on it, I found that there was a lot of information that can help me for this online class. I wish I would have know about this website in the beginning of this class instead of only having a week left. The website has every different part of an argument. For example: Statements, Conversions, Vagueness and Ambiguity, Validity, etc. It also has the different parts of Analyzing of Arguements, Inductive and Deductive Reasoning. It pretty much has everything we learned and wrote about throughout the semester. I will definiely be using this Mission:Critical website for the class final and future classes. It also has quizzes that can help me during my study time.

Observation

I am not the person to jump to conclusions or to judge somebody without getting to know or communicate with he or she first. It is our human nature though to observe everything around us, but this one day I judged somebody I had no idea who he was and my judgment was very wrong. I thought he was a typical gangster looking for trouble and making money in the wrong ways. He started talking to me and I just shunned him off keeping the conversation to a minimum. But then he brought up how he was from a certain city that I grew up in and we started talking about everything. I found out that we had a lot in common and he was a good person. His appearance caused me to judge him in a negative manner but when I got to know him everything I thought was not correct.

Horoscope

Solid, secure and comfortable situations can be expected in most avenues of your life. This is a great time to be with others and to work together. Others may require your presence for a particular job--you are productive. There may be some serious decisions made about the future of a project, investment or term of employment with your business at this time. This change will work in your favor. Your management and directional abilities are at a high focus. A feeling of being at peace and stable on the emotional level comes into play this afternoon. You are most successful with your home life--whether you are single or have a family. You enjoy your friends and may need to plan a regular time when you can interact and visit with these friends.


As the first sentence states I have solid, secure and comfortable situations in most avenues of life I feel is somewhat correct. Though these past couple months to a year have been a choppy ocean, usually I am content of where and what I am doing with my life. I love to be around other people. I live in a fraternity with 37 other people who I am always around. I am a big peoples person and get lonely vary easily. I do try and be a good leader and helper with my friends and I hope with me being around they better themselves also. As for the serious decisions, I just got hired at Pizza Antica and how the horoscope states future projects I find very accucrate because I have a project due for this class, a paper for economics, philosophy, and five mini essays for history all due within the next two weeks. I feel the horoscope is dead on with being most successful with my home life, I can always count on family.

Media Experiences

Media has had a huge impact on my outlook of things and somewhat life. Media usually only shows us the wrong doing or negative news on the world. One of the biggest examples that comes to my mind is the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most americans do not really understand or know why we are over there in a war. The media has shaped the viewing impression that we need to get out and bring our troops back. I am all for bring our troops back but the military needs to accomplish what they went their for first or else every life lost and dollar spent would be wasted. Another example is how the media "tells" us how to look for the opposite sex. There is no exact way someone should look, everyone is different and has different traits that attract them. Younger teens I feel are most susceptible to this media frenzy and this needs to change.

Strategies

 Marketing research strategies include discovering consumers "hot buttons" and the use of surveys, focus groups, and observation. Consumer "hot buttons" is the process of identifying a target market for a product or service and finding out if it matches what the consumer wants. Marketing strategies include targeting advertisements to specific audiences, placement of goods on certain shelves in the stores, and application of the SWOT model to determine companies marketing strategies. SWOT model stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 

Strengths in marketing include location of facilities, unique selling points, large customer base, ability to meet demand, brand recognition, marketing distribution, etc.

Weaknesses include outdated facility/ equipment, insufficient information, debts or limited financial resources, weak consumer demand, poor management and marketing, lack of expertise, etc.

Opportunities in the marketing area are new markets in general, industry or lifestyle threads, technology developments/innovations, fashion influences, new partners, etc.

Threats are competitors, restrictive legal regulations, natural disasters, new technologies, shift in consumer demands, consumer dissatisfaction, slow economy, outsourcing, etc.

Advertisements

Advertisements are all around us. It is said that us consumers are exposed to as many as 5,000 a day today. Back in the 1970's people were exposed to only about 500 ads a day. There are multiple marketing strategies that huge corporations to small businesses use to appeal their product to the people.It seems like the goal of most marketers and advertisers nowadays is to cover every blank space with some kind of brand logo or a promotion or an advertisement. Marketers have found a way to use parking stripes, postage stamps and floors, even buses and buildings, like a target ad which practically engulfs an entire New York city block. To reach people, advertisers have had to get much more creative digitally inserting virtual products within shows and even video games, making them part of the entertainment instead of a break from the entertainment. 

Marketing and Advertisements

A business’s success depends on its ability to determine what customers want and then provide it. For Greenpeace the success would be the supporters feeling like they are making a difference, while actually making a difference. The vision of Greenpeace as a “Frontline” team is to deliver to supporters experiences that engage them in Greenpeace campaigns. They look to develop a sense of belonging and community, so each supporter feels like a member of the Greenpeace team and their individual support makes an impact. Greenpeace strives to be a different, better, more rewarding organization.

Advertising has three purposes: to create product awareness, inform consumers about a product or service, and to motivate consumer demand for the product. Greenpeace advertises their organization by using the internet, newspaper, television, magazines, etc. Many ads rely on fallacies and psychological persuasion rather than credible information and rational argumentation. Greenpeace uses scare tactics to create anxiety or play on consumer fears, insecurities, or sense of shame. Greenpeace ads show the “what if” aspect to consumers or the fallacy of questionable cause. Greenpeace insists that if consumers volunteer or donate money they are helping preserve nature. Greenpeace also uses the fallacy of popular appeals impression “everyone” is jumping on board helping the environment and the fallacy of appeal to inappropriate authority advertising that celebrities are doing it too.

Aliens

Edward Condon is a scientist that believes that UFOs do not exist. In Condon’s argument, he states that scientist need invest their time into studies that will advance science unless people have good ideas regarding UFOs and they should keep pursuing. If people have good ideas for specific studies in the “UFO field” then it should be supported and hope for the best. For example, students read books and magazines that contain UFO reports which are providing students with erroneous evidence. The other scientist, Hynek, believes the UFO phenomena is ignored by authorities and have not been studied in a systematic manner. There needs to be more gathering of data. There needs to be a comparison among large groups who have supposedly sighted UFO objects. Scientists should contact people in other countries to figure out who seen it other than America. Hynek feels that there could be alien space crafts but there needs to be more research. The third scientist, Royston Paynter, is very skeptical about the UFOs and aliens and that there needs to be physical evidence. He states that there is literally no physical evidence to show UFOS exist. I think that Hynek provides the best argument because he shows how there needs to be more gathering of data from other countries and not only in America. Scientists need to gather all the data and compare groups of those who sighted potential alien crafts.

Aristotle

Aristotle taught that wisdom is the greatest virtue. But do not get confused there is a big difference in the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Aristotle was known to be the most wise of all men by a goddess because he understood that he knew nothing. Most men who think they know everything and very intelligent in reality do not know nothing. We “perceive” with our senses in contrast to Plato’s idea that we “think” with reason. Aristotle believed that our thoughts and ideas came about through experience of what we have heard and seen. During college we do acquire more knowledge though studying and course taking. But from what we learn from school and attach that knowledge to the everyday working world to make more money and enhance the companies current situation is wisdom.