accomplishment - i built another house, this one even more legit than the first one (which i lost ..). this one has three windows (which i made from glass that i made by smelting wood in my furnace .. i know, duh, of course that's how you make glass, but it still feels really cool to me!) .. and it has a door, and my bed, furnace, and crafting table, and chest. it's not very aesthetically pleasing and its super boxy and dark with a low ceiling, but hey it's mine! i feel strangely attached to this, like concerned with making it look nice .. and picking a 'nice' plot of land and clearing it, etc, as if this is really 'my' land and it all reflections back on me. but in a way, it is totally my creation , and it does reflect on me - so strange, i never thought i would experience this through a game! it really is an eerily good 'simulation' of how we interact with objects in the analog world. 

A Struggle:

Last Tuesday when Thomas came to talk to us, he mentioned how minecraft isn’t the funnest game he has ever played, but is one of the most influential ones. He also mentioned how sometimes he would love to read a book, but once it is assigned to him as homework, he might just be demotivated to read it because he then sees it as work. Honestly speaking, as a semi-gamer, minecraft isn’t a game I would normally play on my own. I do enjoy playing it, but I also see it as part of my work, something I am supposed to do and not something I would do on my own free time. I think some part of me is just not used to this type of gaming, minecraft is really open-ended. But maybe a bit too open-ended for me? That’s why I always look at what other people are doing and try to build it myself, and when I accomplish it I feel great. Yet I still don’t find myself that engaged in it like some other people in class. I just envy how they have so much patience and creativity, and I feel like I get impatient sometimes with the game. After playing for a while it gets a bit boring and flat for me, and I just don’t enjoy the process of always collecting materials first, even as Thomas said it later becomes more like a habit. I think I’m struggling to be motivated in this game, more than other problems.

An Accomplishment:

Day 1 (10/28/13): 

A Struggle: I am still unable to access the game because I did not use paypal when purchasing the game -- I used skrillz (the equivalent of paypal, but british one) because I used the visa card option, and was asked to provide the last 4 digits of SSS and birthday. It said "verified by visa" so I did not think much of it, but then my bank called my mom of suspicious activity and locked my mom's bank account. After a lot of phone calls and misunderstanding of minecraft being labeled as fraud, I was finally able to clear things up and buy it and download it, but the initial struggle was just obtaining the game. 

An Accomplishment:

I was finally able to buy the game via paypal (after many tries and phone calls!)

An observation:

This isn't so much related to minecraft the game itself, but it made me think of the legitimacy of games and the real possibility of fraud- since I purchased the game ONLINE, not a CD disk from Best Buy or anything. It was only because minecraft is a renowned game was the bank finally able to realize that the purchase wasn't fraud. I question if the decision would have been the same if the game hadn't been popular... Made me think of how much technology has evolved, because I know that when I was growing up, I bought the physical copy of the game from a store, not off the internet.

Day 2: 

In discussions today about making institutions – in particular, high schools – more accessible for people of various identities, many different ideas are brought to the table. These discussions largely center around topics such as race, sexuality, gender, and disability as separate issues to be dealt with. However, often this excludes people with intersectional identities. One specific example of an intersectional identity that is frequently ignored when discussing issues in high schools (and the main focus of this paper), is queer students of color. Although research in areas such as education and experiences of youth who identify as LGBTQ has increased over the past 20 years, the specific issues of LGBTQ students of color in elementary and high schools have been largely untouched by research and discussion. What little research does exist has shown that students who are both queer and colored, in addition to challenges related to their sexual or gender identity, face challenges related to their race and ethnicity (Diaz & Kosciw 2). It is important to try and make high schools safer places for these students to freely express their intersectional identities by exploring some of the reasons why queer students of color feel so “other-ed” by various communities, what kinds of issues they face in high schools, and discussing ideas for ways to improve their educational experience, both academically and socially.

Marriage as a company

When I started reading NW, I ‘m interested in the relationship between Leah and Michel and I think it would be interesting to apply economics in their marriage.

Leah and Michel decided to get married after they had multiple sexes, and their rely for each other is based on sex:“It was hard to get used to the fact that the pleasure her body found in his, and vice versa, should so easily overrule the many other objections she had, or should have had, or thought she should have had.”It seems like a random decision, but the consequence of their marriage is satisfying: They became an accepted couple by the society and their own families. As an immigrant, Michel got a social position wit his marriage with a white woman, and with Michel’s job, Leah is also enabled to release the pressure in her life. Basically they are satisfying each other’s needs socially and sexually. The marriage did improve the productivity of them. When they get married, it’s more than the sex relations they have, they start to share social connections, take care of each other, and inevitably, influence each other. Getting married is like setting up a little company--- each of the family members have different functions, and they came together to maximize their efficiency. And it was efficient at first, the problems followed up with their likely successful business.

A Struggle:

Feeling like I am playing catch up to others in the class skill level wise.

An Accomplishment:

I finally figured out how to make a roof!

An observation:

I find that I am much more ambitious in single player mode than in our multiplayer mode. In single player mode I don't feel like I will be judged for my slow skill level whereas in multiplayer I have to constantly play catch-up. I find this interesting in relation to the conversations we have had in class about audience and how we adapt ourselves to those audiences. In the online context we see and percieve only a fraction of what is going on. Someone's success may seem like inherent skill in the game when it could have taken hours and hours of trial and error.

It would be interesting if we all kept in mind the portrayals we give someone when we see their house or farm and compare it to facebook when looking at someones picture or status.

Zadie Smith’s novel NW does not have a distinct structure; it tries to mimic the randomness of real life. The novel does this in its presentation of words, sentences, chapters, themes and overarching plot. In the novel the lack of clear structure and closure in the ending left the majority of my classmates and me feeling slightly agitated and disorientated. This disorientation is possibly a manifestation of Zadie Smith’s intent to make us aware of our human instinct to put the world into simple patterns that don’t account for exceptions. A New York Times article on putting meaning into randomness says that, “Believing in fate, or even conspiracy, can sometimes be more comforting than facing the fact that sometimes things just happen.” (Belkin, 1) When humans hold on to the comfort of relaying on their faith in a mixture of patterns and coincidences, they prepare themselves to ignore things that could possibly contradict that faith. 

Co-authored  with Yancy

How do people become friends? It occurs to me (Amy) that I don’t intentionally make friends, but just become friends with certain people after living, studying or doing other things together for a while. It is one personality that chooses another personality. So choosing friends is actually a subconscious process. The principle of making friends is “Let it be.” If two are meant to be together, they will finally be together. From NW, it is obvious that Leah and Keisha are very good friends from childhood to adolescence, but their bond became weaker as they grew older. Is it because of they are different initially or they become different as they grow up? How does their relationship change during time? Is it because of age? Is it because of different experience?

“In childhood, friendships are often based on the sharing of toys, and the enjoyment received from performing activities together.”(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship) Leah Hanwell was a person willing and available to do a variety of things that Keisha Blake was willing and available to do.(NW. Zadie Smith 209) That is how they become friends initially. Children have less concern of attitudes and values, and care more about if they can play together.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said, to which Will Rogers added: “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

In his March 2012 Budget Statement, UK Chancellor George Osborne said, “My goal is a tax system where the lowest paid are lifted out of the tax altogether, while the tax revenue we get from the richest increases.” This introduces the debate over a person’s change in behaviour as a labourer – and earner of income – when there is more or less incentive to achieve more in one’s job. According to AngloInfo, the global expat network in London, “The UK operates a system of independent taxation. In determining an individual’s liability to UK tax it is first necessary to consider their residence and domicile status.” Natalie Blake is a resident of the UK and calls London home, so she is subject to the national income tax system. By attending university, becoming a successful lawyer, and marrying a man who comes from a wealthier family and who also earns income, Natalie may be moving into a higher income tax bracket. In UK’s progressive tax system (demonstrated in the table below, where greater income earned places the earner in a higher bracket, thus yielding a higher rate of taxation; Source: AngloInfo),

                For thousands of years, people have been coexisting with animals for the mutual material benefit of both.  Whether we are talking about the herding of sheep and cows for meat or the cultivation of micers and rat-chasers, humans insisted for years on the usefulness of other creatures.  Yet, somewhere along the course of history, people began to keep animals for companionship, forsaking utility, and they thus created what modern society calls pets.  In Zadie Smith’s NW, Leah owns the solitary pet in the entire novel, a dog named Olive, but her relationship with her dog is not simply about utility versus companionship.  Rather as Barbara Smuts says in her essay about inter-species relationships, the bond between Leah and Olive is about transcending “the narrow set of assumptions about what [animals] are capable of, and what sort of relationship it is possible to have with them” (Barbara Smuts 115)