Walter Dean Myers: Author

  He is one of the most prolific authors of our time. Since the late sixties he has written 90 books, 85 of which have been published. His writing has won many awards and garnered him plenty of recognition, some good and some better. This post will take a look at the author of Monster, our class reading, Walter Dean Myers.

   Bio: He was born in West Virginia in 1937 as Walter Milton Myers and somehow ended up in the care of Herbert and Florence Dean in Harlem. To this day he has no clue as to why he was given up but he does know that his adopted parents loved him very much.

   Throughout his education he did not do very well academically but played basketball. When he was in high school one of his teachers noticed that Walter liked to write and she told him to always write no matter what happened to him.

   She said, "It's what you do."

A World Gone Virtual

Gaming Hamster is gaming. 

  This week in we are going to talk abut Virtual Worlds, meaning a world/atmosphere that exists in a virtual space as opposed to a physical space. Now, those who know me well will likely be expecting me to talk about videogames because I study/play videogames with great frequency and the subject of Virtual World lends itself so well to a discussion of videogames. Those people will be either disappointing or surprised. I'm not going to talk about videogames today. I'm going to talk about a movie.

  The film industry has made several entries that capitalize and explore the concept of worlds that exist in a different plain of existence, ex. "Inception" or worlds that exist in a computer environment, ex. "The Matrix." Both films are great and to a great job of exploring those various worlds but they have been talked to death and I have nothing new to add to their discussions.



  In the movie I want to talk about today the Virtual World exists in the internet and it wasn't created by robots as a way to subjugate mankind or for any malevolent reason. The world was actually created to bring the planet together. The movie in question is "Summer Wars," an anime, and the Virtual World is OZ, an internet institution that merges the social network and web browsers. Here's a trailer.

The Collective IQ of Wikis

  Today, we are going to talk about the crowdsourced informational encyclopedic website called Wikipedia. The website has sparked some controversy in academia because of its crowdsourced nature. Crowdsourcing, as defined by Merriam-Webster's website, is "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers." The source of Wikipedia's information is the whole of the internet. Anyone can sign up for an account and add/change content and the very nature of this source is where the controversy comes from.

Young Adult Literature Recommendations: Part 1

Hi, my name is Matt and this is a recommended reading list for Young Adult Literature class. The books in this list are ones that I enjoyed during my middle school to high school years. I thoroughly enjoyed each one and I whole heartily recommend them. We'll start with the author that got me started


Michael Crichton
Crichton was a medical doctor in his professional life and he wrote many non-fiction works/stories on the subject. His fiction novels usually follow a team of scientists as they group together to solve a dire problem.

Andromeda Strain- Crichton's first novel. A an object of unknown origin crashes to Earth and unleashes an unheard of sickness on the population of a small town. A team of scientists is gathered to find out what is happening and why.

Jurassic Park- Dinosaurs. Seriously, what more do you want. The novel is quite interesting and much more engaging than the movie. A wealthy entrepreneur invites a teams of scientists to examine and give an endorsement for his dinosaur amusement park.

Lost World- Also dinosaurs. Also much better than the movie. One of the characters from the first novel goes to the island where the dinosaur testing for the amusement park was performed.


Sphere- A novel about the mind, imagination, and the mystery at the bottom of the ocean. A team of scientists have to travel to travel to the bottom of the ocean to examine a mysterious discovery. I have read this book so many times that I have had to buy three copies. One of my very favorite novels of all times.

State of Fear- Not exactly YA Lit and I only read it a few years ago but the novel is amazing. It is a fiction piece with the controversy of global warming as a backdrop.

Arguing With Form

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Donec sollicitudin nunc nec erat varius auctor dapibus lectus tempor. Nunc ut adipiscing metus. Pellentesque dictum, mi id tincidunt lacinia, tellus purus commodo orci, nec ultrices sapien massa et mauris. Pellentesque convallis ipsum eget lorem tincidunt scelerisque. Vestibulum at massa vitae eros accumsan lobortis ornare non dui. Fusce ultricies neque eu turpis tincidunt at venenatis lacus imperdiet. Ut sagittis leo vel massa egestas nec aliquet risus imperdiet. In aliquam, magna quis varius facilisis, arcu eros auctor felis, in ullamcorper lacus elit eget nunc. Aliquam erat volutpat. Etiam quis ligula quis mi euismod ultricies. Nam at feugiat ante. 

Gamertag: The Online Identity of a Gamer

X-Box Gamertags

  My name is Matt and this entry is for my Digital Rhetoric class. I will be talking about the concept of Online Identity as far as videogames are concerned but I am limiting the topic even further to console videogames because I am only recently getting into pc gaming. For those unaware; yes there is a difference.

  In the virtual world of videogames gamers interact online in a mode typically referred to as multiplayer and each and every gamer has their own online identity known as their gamertag which linked to their account on their console. The quantity of multiplayer games has increased exponentially since the start of the current generation of game consoles (Playstation 3, X-Box 360, and Nintendo Wii/ Wii U which will be released soon).

Narrative Mechanics: Strays

  At its heart "Strays" by Mark Richard is a story about stability vs chaos. The story handles themes of abuse and neglect and is a tragedy in that the downfall is caused by the fatal flaw of the main characters. In the case of "Strays" the fatal flaw is that the boys are young children and therefor powerless to affect the world around them.
  The two boys desperately try to grasp onto something consistent in their lives but because they are so young they are at the mercy/indifference of the adults around them.

  The story features a binary between Uncle Trash and the stray dogs. What makes them two sides of the same coin?

  What are the elements that provide the boys with stability?

  How does the very broad strokes first person style affect the tragedy of this narrative?

  The adults spend the story destroying the elements of stability in the boys' life. What does the work accomplish by having the boys destroy that last vestige of stability?

Thoughtful Cat is very thoughtful.

Interacting with Rhetoric in Virtual Worlds: Blog Remix

  The studies and practices of rhetoric have been around since the fifth century BCE where the Greeks used the language skills taught to them by the Sophists to operate within the structures Greek democracy. These new methods of discourse became known as rhetoric and since then it has been evolving to include new mediums and styles. 

  One new rhetorical medium that is still in its fledgling stages and has immense potential and value is video games. The medium of video games gets a lot of bad press. Some of it is deserved and some is overhyped scare mongering perpetuated by a public that would rather stick its fingers in its ears than admit that video games can be more than noisy diversions for children and violence obsessed teenagers. 

Salutations All Around!

  Greetings. Welcome to this educational blog where we will be replacing the chalkboard. And yes I said we. That doesn't mean that I am some crazy Tyler Durden persona with multiple identities in one body. We means that I want you to get involved. My name is Matt and I will be your host.

  Now, I am a college student and I made this blog for my classes so the content here will be very analytical and critical. But I will not forget that this stuff is fun as well.

  This blog will regard my "learnings" as learning cart so eloquently stated. And the focus will be literature because I am an English Major. My definition of literature, however, is rather broad. To me literature includes the following:

• Books
• Movies
• Television Shows
• Song Lyrics
• Comics
• Graphic Novels (Yes there is a difference)
• Video Games
• And I'll likely add more to the list as I go.

  Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to some discourse.