Background Sources

1.  Music Loss among Ethnic Minorities in China -- A Comparison of the Li and Hui Peoples
          Yang Mu
          http://www.jstor.org/stable/834498
2.  The Decline of Folk Traditions in Modern Societies
          http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=c&p=a&a=i&ID=1664
3.  The Global Monoculture (from Perspectives on Globalization)
          Maude Barlow
4.  Jeremy Grimshaw, Ph.D.
          BYU School of Music- Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology
5.  Colonization, "Westernization" and Social Culture in the Post-Colonial Societies
          http://india_resource.tripod.com/colonial-impact-culture.html

Thesis

Here is my tentative thesis.  Please give all the help you can, classmates. :)

With the things of the world being so accessible today, things like music and movies and news are able to spread worldwide in a matter of minuets.  With this happening, individual cultures are taking a toll.  With globalization, music is becoming more and more similar, no matter where it comes from.  Globalization is bring about the destruction of each individual cultures musical tradition.  People are turning their backs on their own traditions and complying to what everybody else is doing with music.

Issues Idea

Well as many of you know, I am a music major.  Music is one of the few things that I really, really care about and during class I was trying to figure out something that would relate to music in some way.  It finally came.  I want to talk about how globalization is destroying cultures cultural music.  Now a days, music is becoming world wide and cultures are forgetting their own musical traditions.  I see this a a major issue and think that it would be something that i could write about and really care about as I write.

Here are two videos of some really cool cultural music.  It is called Mongolian Throat Singing.  It is one of the coolest things you will ever hear.  Watch Them!

RA Reflection

Overall I think that the RA went pretty well.  It was not the easiest of papers but it definitely was not the hardest of papers.  It was kind of nice to not have to research and come up with your own arguments to make an argument, but to just look at someone else's writing and discus how their papers worked.  I would say that it was harder then the opinion editorial because with the opinion, we were able to put down our own opinion and we all have those so it was easy to voice them.  With the RA we had to really delve into the article and look at it closely and really see what was going on.

RA Thesis

"The Relationship Between Globalization and Militarism" is an effective argument to convince the every day person and also people of political power to reform and if necessary, or scrap these organizations that support globalization and force countries to militarism because it uses real examples from the past and present to show it's effect, statistics that are just plain scary and a organization and flow that keeps the reader interested to create an appeal to Logos.

Militarism and Globalization

I have chosen The Relationship Between Globalization and Militarism to write my Rhetorical Analysis on.

Audience:
In this article, the writer is directing his argument to more of the people of the First and Second world standings. Also, he could be directing it to government officials who actually have the power to change the way the world is going.

Current and/or contemporary events of importance:
New Third world countries are being forces to base their economies on a military focused directions.  Because of globablization, there are even more wars being fought around the world then during the Cold War.  Most of these wars are not even between different nations, but are civil wars. 

Profession/race/age/socioeconomic status:
This paper is directed to people who probably have a high education.  People who are not lacking and living in a country that is highly developed and self-sufficient.  I don't think he has really directed it to any certain age group.  I think it will have an effect on all ages and most people, regardless of their backgrounds or professions.

Ideologies:
To stop all the loss of human life, these ideas and issues and ho globalization  is pushing countries to militarism needs to stop.

Issues of importance:
South Africa only is aloud to make weapons by the World Trade Organization and are not allowed to put funding into civil or environmental projects.

Opponents (real or perceived):
Big businesses in general, especially big arms dealers and manufactures.  Also, large global organizations who support globalization.

Major fear/worries:
That if this isn't taken care of, more and more governments are going to collapse and millions of lives are going to taken because of all the ways

OpEd

In mu opinion, I think that being able to express one's opinion is a good thing to be able to do.  I really liked being able to write a paper that allowed me to build an argument to help persuade somebody of something that I felt strongly about.  People need the skills to be able to build a persuasive argument and then back it up.  This paper really gave me a chance to better fine tune that while I got to write about something that I really like.

Now for a little humor aside, here is a video of something that I think most of you will find amusing.  I would venture to say that you are only going to see at BYU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1W_KXcYsgA
Enjoy! :)

Peer Review Skinny

How do I feel about our peer review?  Well I think that it had its strengths but it also had its weaknesses.  Overall I like the idea of peer review.  Having someone look over my paper gave me many new ideas and showed me some of my faults.  I had someone with a view that more disagreed with mine.  I think that did help to build my arguments and see how I can build those stronger, but I think having a second person who had a more agreeing view point would be good to help build the other parts of the paper.  I think that the more people who read you paper, the more advise you get and then you have even more choices in how I can improve my paper.  Overall, I like how the peer review went, but I feel like it needed to continue with more people reviewing the paper.  So a good start, but not finished.

What Ever I Want

When you are given an assignment to write about anything you want, just as long as it is something, the possibilities are seriously endless.  There is no end to the choices we have for writing.  As seeing that I have to write about something, I better start writing about something and not just nothing, but that might just be exactly what I write about.  Is there really such a thing as nothing?  Is there ever a time when nothing is going on?  Because, in essence there is all ways something and we are always doing something.

Now our instructor told us we could write on anything but it had to be something.  Well I would argue that as long as we wrote something, it would be about something and not nothing.  All words are something and not nothing.  So I argue that it is impossible to not write about something.  You can't write about nothing.  Except that I just did write about nothing, while in reality I did write about something.  It is just an endless cycle that will keep repeating itself.  If you write about nothing, which I just did, you are still writing about something.  It is a paradox.  Just a little something for everybody to think about and I would argue that I did complete this blog assignment and even though, against Chris's instructions, I wrote about nothing but still wrote about something. :) There is always Something in Nothing.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Paper

Well, the issue I want to talk about is kind of based on the degradation of society today.  I want to talk about how the art of dance can help bring a bit of class back into the world and how all BYU students should be required to take at least one dance class in their college career.  Over the last few years, society has taken a drop in the way people interact with each other and most people seem to have no class.  I believe that learning to do a formal style of dance can help bring us up a bit.

I realize that maybe a lot of people don't like to dance and don't think they can dance, but I still think that just the process of learning to dance, no matter how good you become, can bring a more classy style to how we act.  Some people might think that it is an infringement on their rights, but when you think of the benefits, such as all the girls being impressed with the guys and the guys finding the girls more attractive, who would believe that that was an infringement.  Also, BYU has the biggest and one of the best ballroom dance programs in the world.

 BYU Ballroom Dance

So really there is no reason not to take a dance class anyway but still, i think it should be a requirement.

My Brain Monsoon

Well, on thing that I feel very strongly about is that every person should learn how to dance and i don't mean the freak out stuff most teenagers do.  There is something about the art of a true dance that forges a bond between the two dancers.  It has a very elegant but yet still intimate feeling.  Now tell me, who likes to dance with someone who just stands in one place and just shuffles their feet and rocks back in forth?  Well I sure don't.  What girl wouldn't want to be asked to dance by a guy who can just take her sailing across the floor? Also, what guy wouldn't want to ask a girl who could just follow him with the smoothest of responses and movement.  There is nothing quite like these feelings.  I believe that a social or ballroom dance class should be required here at BYU.

Another thing that I care about is golf.  I love the sport of golf.  Most people think it is an old person sport, but i disagree whole heartedly.  I have never felt anything quite as satisfactory when you hit the straightest drive and the ball goes exactly where you want it.  Also, the sound is almost to die for.  That solid crack as the club face makes contact with the ball and sends it soaring straight through the are.

Well these are two ideas that come to mind.  I hope you can give me some feed back on what you think.

-AEB

What I want to do.

There is only one thing that I can see myself doing and that is teaching.  I would like to teach Music History at a university one day.  I will be getting a BA in Music with an emphasis on music history and then go to grad school to become a musicologist.  After that I am going to try to find a job teaching music history as I work ona doctorate in something.  It is a very limited career choice, but I love music and history and I want to teach so that is why I want to teach music history.