Blog Post #5

What is plan B?   What parts of it do you think would be successful/accepted in your culture?   Which parts will not be so successful to achieve/accept?   Give your reasons.

In answering this, you should be sure you explain what Plan B is (it has different parts).   You should identify your cultural group.   Please note, I did not say your national group.     You need to define your cultural group.   For example, if someone asked me to define my cultural group, I might say the people in my group are liberal, Christian, middle aged, white women.   How you define your cultural group is YOUR business, but you do have to define it.   Then explain which components of Plan B will be most accepted by this group and which will be the hardest for them to work towards.   Give your reasons based on your own experience with that group.   I'm NOT asking if YOU personally are going to find some part of Plan B easy/hard.   I'm asking you to think about your group.

Remember to cite and to edit and spell check.  Be sure to post a response to one other person's paper.

Blog Post #4

Consider this quote from Albert Einstein, physicist, 1921 Nobel Prize recipient:

"Nothing will . . . increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

Respond to this quote, using information from the 12th chapter.   Do you agree with Einstein or not?   (Note:   I didn't say "do you want to be vegetarian" --- I simply asked if you think Einstein is right or wrong in this statement).   In your response, think about how, given the information in this chapter, restaurants and other food service industries could better respond to the food challenges involved in feeding 8 billion people.     What changes do you think they should make?

Be careful to quote, paraphrase, and cite correctly.    Paragraph well.   Do not use any sources except the information available in this chapter.    Provide a correct reference at the end.    Be sure to also write a response to one other person's writing.   

Blog Post #3

In chapter 9, Brown discusses three different non-fossil fuel types of energy.    Briefly (in 75 words or less) summarize what he says about ONE of these three types of energy and then discuss that one type of energy with respect to YOUR country.     In doing that, I’d like you to find ONE article in LexisNexis on the subject of your country and the type of energy you are focusing on.    I’d like you to DISCUSS the topic, so please express opinions.   Don’t just summarize Brown and then summarize what is in the article you found.  Instead, summarize Brown and then discuss (using opinions and information from the article you found) the topic of that type of energy in your country. "Discuss" by definition means "express opinions."   

I’d like you to incorporate information from that article into your discussion and I’d like you to use citations and put references to both Brown and your article at the end of your posting.       Use APA format.   Some of you are still pretty weak on APA format, so please be sure to look at this http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ (Article from a database) and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/ (Basic format for books).    Do not count your references in your word count.

After you have written YOUR post, remember to respond to the posting of one other student in the class.     

The usual rules apply:   spell check, paragraph, be careful of using citations well.    

Blog Post #2

Brown addresses a variety of environmental problems in this book.    Focus on one environmental problem that the author discusses between p. 55 and p. 92.   Summarize what the problem is and what Brown says about its impact.   Don’t forget to use a citation.    Then explain how YOUR country is potentially impacted by this problem and what, if anything, people should do (give your opinion!) to address this problem.   Explain how you see this problem being part of YOUR personal/professional future in your country.    It is possible that the author mentions your country --- and you can certainly paraphrase and cite his ideas --- but you need to address what you think people in your country should do about it.   If the author does not mention your specific country, you can write an answer based on what you know of the problem in your country, again being careful to express opinions about what people in your country should do about the problem.    

Keep your answer to 250 well paraphrased/cited words.   Write a response of about 100 words to someone else’s reply.    

Blog Post 1

Consider the following article that was recently posted on the website of the Guardian, a major newspaper in England.    

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/jun/27/water-shortage-china-middle-east

Read it carefully and then, using the “Comment” feature on this blog site write a 250-word response in which you respond to the information and ideas in the article with reference to the information presented in the first 55 pages of the book World on the Edge.   You may choose to focus on any part(s) of the news story but you should express opinions and you should support what you say by referencing material in the book.    

Things to remember as you write your response:

As you write your response, please remember to paraphrase, quote, and cite  correctly --- from both the article and the text.     Remember that in using information or ideas presented in either the text or the article you must do the activities in column A and column B.

Column A	Column B
Quote OR Paraphrase	Cite

To quote, you should use the exact words of the source and a citation.   

Example:

Saudi Arabia announced three years ago that the aquifer it was using to produce wheat “was largely depleted and they would be phasing out wheat production” (Brown, 2011, p. 21).

***
To paraphrase, you should radically change the words and structure but NOT the meaning AND you should provide a citation.

Example:

Brown (2011) notes that the Saudis have acknowledged that the aquifer they were using to produce wheat is so played out that soon they will not be able to produce wheat any longer in Saudi Arabia (p. 21).

Please remember some other important things:

1.   Do not quote statistics.   Instead, paraphrase and cite.   

Bad example:   The Saudis anticipate needing to import grain for “30 million people” (Brown, 2011, p. 21).
Good example:   The Saudis anticipate needing to import enough grain to feed 30 million people (Brown, 2011, p. 21).

2.   Use APA style.   That means that when you cite, you will acknowledge the LAST name of the author, the year of publication, and, where possible, the page number.   Since there is no page numbering system for the article, you don’t need to use page numbers.   You can cite by either using a signal phrase or an in-text citation.

A signal phrase is a style in which the author’s name and date become the subject of the sentence or a major part of a phrase:

Example:    Brown (2011) reports that the Saudis anticipate needing to import enough grain to feed 30 million people (p. 21).

An in-text citation puts the information at the end of the sentence:

Example:   The Saudis anticipate needing to import enough grain to feed 30 million people (Brown, 2011, p. 21).

3.  Paragraph your writing.   Do not just write one giant block of print.

4.   Spell check before you submit.   I will count off a lot for any posting that is not spell-checked.


Things to remember as you respond to others:

Remember to check back on the blog and to find a response that you would like to respond to.    What do you agree or disagree with?   Do not just give the writer a compliment or criticism (e.g. “I really like what you said”).  Instead, RESPOND.   What has the writer forgotten?   What other information could the writer use to support his/her point?    Responses are shorter (about 100 words), but should also be well paragraphed and spell checked.    

Again, use the Comment feature on the blog site to post your response to someone else’s response.   Be sure to use the words “In response to XXXX” to show whose comment you are responding to.   For example, if you decide to write a response to a comment by somebody named “Tom Harvey” you should write something like,  “In response to Tom Harvey’s comment, I want to add . . .”