The Secret

My final blog post will be about the most influential book I have ever read. The name of this book is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. For anybody who has never heard of it, the book talks about the power of the law of attraction. The basic idea behind the law of attraction is three simple words: thoughts become things. By using the law of attraction, one can reach goals and achieve things that never seemed possible before. The book (later turned into a movie) is full of success stories and exercises in order to master the law of attraction. When I heard about it for the first time, I was extremely skeptical. I decided to give it a try, and I noticed immediate effects. This book is great for anybody who is in a dark corner of their life or even for anybody who is extremely ambitious and has set high goals for themselves in life. If i could recommend one book for the rest of the world to read, The Secret would be it.

Logan M. Spears

This blog most is much different than any other post I have had. This is not about education or rhetoric, but rather life and how much mine has changed in the past 36 hours. Around 8:30 PM on Monday night, I received the phone call everybody is terrified of. I was informed that one of my good friends of 14 years had committed suicide. I want to take this opportunity to tell everybody that if you are in a dark alley of life or if you ever consider hurting yourself, PLEASE go find medical help. By ending your own life, the only thing you are doing is multiplying your pain and distributing it to all those who love you. I ask you to pray for the family of Logan Spears and most of all, please do not let a cry for help go unnoticed. Suicide is the most preventable form of death.

God Bless

http://snappingnecks.blogspot.com/

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the rare opportunity to spend time with my older brother Trevor. He plays football for Purdue University, so it is a rare occasion to have him around the house. While he was home, he introduced me to a blog written by one of his teammates, Kevin Ballinger. Kevin's blog consists of various posts, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, and sometimes a mix. Since checking out his blog, I have spent multiple hours going through his blog and reading all that he has to say. The kid is extremely funny and has some interesting thoughts to share with the world. If you are ever in need of a good laugh, I recommend checking it out.

Charlie Chaplin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

This video was introduced to me by my oldest brother Hunter over the Thanksgiving holiday. Immediately after hearing it, I knew I should make a blog post about it. The video is filled with a message that needs to be told to every country on earth. Charlie Chaplin talks to the people of his nation and tells them that we need to rid ourselves of greed and start working together to make the earth a great place to live. He tells the people to be human beings with love in their hearts rather than acting like cattle who follow every command from their superior. This is an argument that goes far beyond religion, race, or political party. This is a message that needs to be heard by all of human kind.

Worst Analogies Ever

One way my roommates and I pass times on down nights it using StumbleUpon. For those of you who have never been blessed with the greatness that is StumbleUpon, it is a website that you plug your interests into, and the website takes you to random websites relating to those interests. One of the hidden gems I found was this post on the worst high school essay analogies ever. I may be stretching it by saying that this article will enhance your rhetorical skills, however it will give you a good laugh. It is a compilation of analogies that either make no sense, ramble on way too long, or make no point in the paper. I highly recommend everyone to read this post if you are in need of some internet humor.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/AYas21/www.etni.org.il/farside/analogies.htm

Warren Buffet

Through the past year or so of my life, I have become obsessed with following the lives of various successful people. Some of my idols are Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Sam Walton, Rob Dyrdek, and Jack Canfield. These people are the best in the world at what they do. The thing I admire the most about these people is that since making it to the top of the world, they focus on helping others make it too. (see my previous post on Mark Cuban if you have time) As a young aspiring entrepreneur, I find it important to look into the lives of these people and mimic their habits. One thing I stumbled across was an article about a recent spending binge by Warren Buffet. In case any of you did not know, he is probably the most successful investor to ever live. He specialized in taking small businesses, dropping millions sometimes billions of dollars into them, and watching them turn into world wide corporations. Buffett has created jobs for millions across the world, which is why I respect him more than anybody except maybe my father. Anyways, Buffett spent $25 billion on US bank stock this past quarter. Think about it, the greatest investor to ever live just made one of his biggest investments ever in US bank stock. Point in case, INVEST IN US BANK STOCK IMMEDIATELY.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/07/markets/buffett_stocks/?iref=NS1

Presentation

My presentation was over the plastic recycling solution on the first day. I'm glad I decided to go first because it was nice to get it out of the way right off the bat. If I were to do it again, I would have touched more on talking about what I wanted to find out with the research paper. I feel like overall I did well with it, and it seemed to all go smoothly. I think the topic I picked was a good topic that I can dig into and get a lot of information and research out of. I thought everybody did a great job with the presentations.

The Guru's Secret

http://www.saul-rodriguez.com/2010/08/need-to-breathe.html

This is a story that has been important to me since my junior year of high school. December 5th, 2010, the night of the football state championship, my coach walked into the locker room and told us this story. He told us that if we wanted to win as bad as we wanted to breathe, we would win. We ended up winning 36-6 over our hated rivals in front of 30,000 people and finished the season as the 13th ranked team in the nation. Ever since that night, I think of this story when I get overwhelmed with schoolwork or anything else. I try to implement this idea in as many facets of my life as possible, and I have found it to be effective. If you can prioritize your life correctly and strive for what you want, it will eventually become yours. People seem to give up on their goals for success even when they are closer than ever before to achieving them. This story can provide valuable advice for anybody who is pushing to achieve success.

Steve Jobs TED Talk

I decided to do two posts on TED talks because this Steve Jobs commencement speech is a video that has been one of my favorites for years. Being the younger brother of a web designer and social network developer, I have had no choice to be tech-savvy. Steve Jobs has been my brother Hunter’s idol for years, so it did not take long for my brother to force our whole family to listen to this video. It is a great speech, and it immediately had an impact on me. The part that meant the most to me is when he speaks about doing what you love. He claims that you must do what you love to make great work. The most important thing is to keep looking for what you love and never settle for less. Since hearing this advice, I have been in relentless pursuit of finding what I love. I have started to realize that my passion is in the music industry, and I have Steve Jobs to thank for helping me find it. Steve Jobs is one of the most influential people our era has ever seen, and he is truly a remarkable person with a roller coaster life. I recommend everybody to watch this video and learn a little more about the life of Steve Jobs.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Recycling Plastic

I chose to blog about the TED talk on recycling plastics. This talk immediately grabbed my attention because I spent my high school career working for a dumpster company, so recycling was part of my daily life. The video touches on Mike Biddle’s stance on recycling, and what he thinks could be a boost for the green movement. We have been wasting immense amounts of plastic by dumping it in the landfill with all of the other invaluable trash. Only ten percent of our plastics end up being reused. Seeing entire recycling dumpsters of plastic and paper being dumped in the landfill was a daily occurrence working for a dumpster company. Plastic is a very abundant and valuable material that is not being reused nearly enough. With basic sorting and melting processes, we can recycle plastic for reuse. It is more cost efficient and energy efficient to recycle used plastic than it is to make new plastic. It would also save us a large dent in the environment. There is less CO2 output by using the recycling process. If the United States could implement this stance on recycling plastic, we could save our selves money, energy, and the environment.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html

Library Studio

The Role of Women in Iran

The part of the video we watched in class that stood out most to me was hen the young girl watched the older woman get yelled at by the man in the parking lot. The context of the scene is what is most important. The environment that women deal with in Iran is much different from what we have in the United States. Although times are getting better, and women are gaining more rights, Iran is far from the United States. The scene immediately reminded me of the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This book is all about the life of a young woman growing up during the revolution in Iran. If any of you have read The Kite Runner, it is essentially a female perspective of that book. Throughout the novel, the girls go through arranged marriages, which were in no way consensual, beatings from husbands for disobedience, and the trouble of having to hide their faces whenever in public. The book gives the reader a great perspective on the life of an Iranian woman and shows the struggles they deal with on a daily basis. It is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anybody, male or female.

Marine Confronts Police About Brutality

This is a video of a man named Shamar Thomas. He is a 24-year old Marine veteran who did two tours in Iraq. The video shows him screaming directly at several officers working the occupy Wall Street movement. After seeing several acts of police brutality, Thomas began to individually address police officers and made it very clear that what the police were doing was wrong. This video is a breath of fresh air in the news. It seems to be every night on the news is nothing but negativity and seeing people killed and robbed. This video shows a stroke of hope that there are people out there who are not afraid to stand up to authority. I believe the police force has gone in a downward direction and is coming closer and closer to corruption. In no way is every police officer corrupt, in fact most of them are not, however there is an alarming amount of police officers that overuse their power and authority. I have spent a lot of time in downtown Louisville, Kentucky (my home town) which at times is a very rough neighborhood. Police do not hesitate to use violence to subdue suspects, and they often go overboard with their force. This video perfectly shows the feelings and opinions of those oppressed by police brutality. Once again I would like to emphasize that I believe the majority of police officers are working to serve and protect us, but there is a number or police who practice corruption and unnecessary violence on a daily basis.

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh7475FAFF0g9E91d2

Mark Cuban's Patriotism

This blog post by Mark Cuban is an excellent piece of writing. Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our era. In this article he speaks about the economy and an idea on how to improve it one person at a time. Cuban claims that the most patriotic thing someone can do is getting extremely rich and starting his or her own business. His reasoning behind this claim is that when someone makes a lot of money, you pay a lot of taxes, which will benefit millions of American citizens. The next step is to start a business. By starting a business, one can create thousands of jobs, thus feeding thousands of families. By getting rich and starting a company, anybody can change their community, state, country, or even the world. I think this is a great approach and has some great rhetorical value. Mark Cuban is one of the biggest role models in my life, and I respect anything he has to say about making money and being successful. 

http://blogmaverick.com/2011/09/19/the-most-patriotic-thing-you-can-do-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogmaverick%2FtyiP+%28blog+maverick%29

Children of Men

One thing that stood out to me about Children of Men was the role of the baby. It was treated as the savior both literally and figuratively. Everybody surrounding the child dedicated his or her life to protecting and nourishing the baby. Another thing that stood out was the timing and effect of the child’s crying. The baby would be perfectly tranquil even in times of turmoil and noise. However, when things seemed to be getting out of hand, and the audience started to lose hope, the baby would cry. After the crying stopped, a stroke of luck would occur, and hope was restored. For example, when they are in the building fighting off the military and they are being closed in on, the baby cries. Soon after, a cease-fire is called as the baby is carried through a crowd of frozen shoulders, and nothing but the baby’s cry can be heard. Just when it seems that the luck had run out, the baby cries and restores hope to the audience. Another example of this is when the baby is on the boat in the final scene. The main character then reveals that he has suffered a gun shot wound and is dying. At this point, the audience worries that the baby and her mother will be stranded on a rowboat in the ocean. Low and behold, the baby begins to cry and a fishing boat named, “Tomorrow” comes to the rescue to save the baby and her mother. These symbolic messages serve as supportive evidence toward the hypothesis of the baby being a savior figure in the story.

Wear Sunscreen

I chose to write about an essay written by Mary Schmich in 1997 to a graduating high school class. Baz Luhrmann presents it in a YouTube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI) It is a great example of using pathos to grab the audience’s interest. He dispenses random advice regarding how to prioritize your life. I chose this video because it is how I have started my day for the past few years. At least once or twice a day, I will listen to this video to keep my priorities straight. My brother sent me this video during my sophomore year of high school. At the time I had poor relationships with my three brothers and did not talk to my parents unless I absolutely had to. My oldest brother Hunter told me that I need to clean up my act or I could lose my family and attached a link to the video. After watching the video, I started working on my relationship with each of my family members. The video helped me improve my attitude and made me realize how important family is. Ever since then, I have become very close with my brothers and get along with my parents. This video has made a huge impact on my life and it has played a significant role in who I have become today. I would recommend everybody to listen to this at least one time a week. It has a great message that everybody can benefit from in one way or another.