Allegory of the Cave Sonnet

Plato believed in not being chained
He wanted us to use logic to be free
Our fears he wanted us to have tamed
He wanted us to turn around and beyond the shadows see

The Theory of Forms states that our senses deceive
What we see and hear is just a poor copy of what is real
Logic must enter and ignorance must leave
We must search for truth and often ignore what we feel

A Philosopher-King was Plato's ideal ruler
Only a wise man elected by wise people could be efficient
A smart and powerful ruler, nothing could be cooler
A ruler so wise he is almost omniscient

So the Allegory of the Cave is meant to illuminate
Truth must permeate

Brain With [insert here] Legs

For our literary circle we (Miranda, Erica and I) decided we would read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. There was no particular reason for why we chose this over the other two novels. All three books were books I had heard about but was unfamiliar with. To be completely honest, the title of the novel won us over because it sounded more interesting than the other two. All day today we have been communicating via email and discussing how to work this assignment out. The predominant way we will use for communication will be email because it is both practical and efficient. Upon computing the data (how many pages in the book divided by the amount of days we want to read the book over) we came to the conclusion that in order to finish on our planned schedule we will read 40 pages of the book per day.

Our idea for presenting our novel and demonstrating our mastery of it was creating a specific and separate blog that we will all have access to. In this blog we will post summaries as well as other interesting posts pertaining to the novel. We decided to do this because we thought it'd be cool if we could use our experience to create a tool that could not only help us and our peers, but other students who are studying the novel in other parts of the world. More details will be posted as the blog develops. Our goal is to have the blog up and running by Friday.

A mindmap could develop as a possible final 'project' for the novel where we show our knowledge of it in interconnected way.

Forbes: 100 Most Powerful Women

Forbes is famous for publishing their 100 Most ___ lists. My favorite of such lists is the 100 Most Powerful Women list. So how does Forbes find the worlds most powerful women and what system do they use to rank them? Well, they begin by dividing up certain women in high ranking positions into seven categories; billionaires, celebrities, business, media, philanthropists, politicians and technology. The women are then assessed on a money metric (such as GDP), a media metric (both traditional and social media) and an impact metric (such as their influence across industries, cultures, countries, how many people they influence and how actively they use that influence).

The top ten most powerful women of the 2013 list: 

1. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

2. Dilma Rousseff, President of Brasil

3. Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

4. Michelle Obama, First Lady of United States

5. Hillary Clinton, Personality/Philanthropist

6. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

7. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of International Money Fund

8. Janet Napolitano, Secretary-United States Department of Homeland Security

9. Sonia Gandhi, President of India's National Congress (political party)

10. Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo

Secrets of the Worlds Most Powerful Women

My Big Question

Seeing as how I forgot to post my big question..

My big question is simple and something that I have wondered for quite awhile.
We live in a world of experts...so why are there more problems than before? Is the complexity we have created better, or is the simple way we used to live better?

Hamlet Essay

Well, I wasn't 100% satisfied with my essay. I feel like there's more I could do. I definitely want to come back to it and work on it more because I liked the prompt and I feel like the essay could really go places.

Hamlet, Self-Overhearing and Performativity

     It is often said that actions speak louder than words. I disagree with this. I would say that such claim is erroneous because words are actions in themselves. Words have real world implications that can be seen in everyday life; we make assertions, promises, threats and judges hand down sentences that can condemn criminals to a life in prison. Hamlet, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, shows us the impact of words as Hamlet’s performative utterances are not only describing his present state but also creating meaning for and changing the reality created within the play.

     We use words and language all the time. We use it in our physical world to convey ideas, opinions or ask for something. We also use it in our minds, in a self-overhearing way. We talk to ourselves in order to straighten our thoughts or debate an issue with ourselves. Despite no one else hearing our thoughts, we hear them and them being there makes them as real as if we had promised a loved one something. Much like so, Hamlet’s soliloquys constitute a self-overhearing like process in which his words constitute actions more than anything. In his soliloquies, he condemns Claudius for what he did to his father and convinces himself that killing him is the correct thing to do. His soliloquies have impact in the world of Hamlet, because they are the performatives that Hamlet uses to decide what to do and that in turn shapes the course of events.

     Performative utterances can only be successful if the receiving party infers the correct meaning behind the words. Hamlet often uses his words to act crazy, and fools almost every character into thinking he is mad. He uses words to try to shape the unfolding events in a way that would set up the success of his plans and that would help further his agenda. He successfully fooling almost all characters to believe in his madness though his performative shows us the success of it.

     Performativity impacts the world around, but can also be seen to impact the performer directly. Hamlet uses words to do a plethora of things within the play and to give meaning to the reality of it. Through his performativity, especially that seen in his soliloquies, his self-overhearing reveals to him a good deal about himself. He uses performativity to criticize himself and reflect on the reality that is unfolding around him. He also uses performativity to come to logical conclusions, which are revealing to him in terms of his agenda.

     Performativity is impactful, and can describe as well as create. Hamlet shows us that to be true, but apart from that we can see it in ourselves and in the real world around us. Performativity creates a sense of what’s true and our self-overhearing can reveal things to us we did not previously know.