A New Protest Song

Some would agree that Lupe Fiasco isn't a highly political person, but his song "Words I Never Said", a song released in March of this year, hits at some major controversies that are going on today. One line that really embodied what has been going on in Wisconsin, and Madison, is as follows;"Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts." Lupe is not necessarily referencing the Walker cuts but it does reach out to Wisconsin and it's recent political struggles. Since the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was just last week I found this line relevant, "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of [expletive]/Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets/How much money does it take to really make a full clip/9/11 building 7 did they really pull it/Uhh, And a bunch of other cover ups." Here Lupe is stating that the government did not tell us the whole truth about the events surrounding the attack on the towers. Though it has been 10 years, many people are still skeptical about 9/11. I wouldn't say this song is spectacularly written or extremely well recorded, but it does strike me as a decent political song for 2011.

President Word Cloud

While looking over the Inagural Words: 1789 to Present, I found the differences interesting when comparing our first president George Washington's word cloud against current president Barack Obama's. Washington emphasized the words government, public, citizen, duty, etc; whereas Obama highlights nation, America, work, generation, etc.

Though there were many differences within the word clouds and time periods, I found many past presidents to have governement and people at the very top of their cloud. Also, I only saw Presidents Madison, Lincoln, and Harding have war towards the top of their cloud. Going through the presidents I also observed the dissimilarities between the first and second inaugural speeches made by Washington, Lincoln, and Bush. All three presidents had varying word clouds, with Lincoln's most diverse. In his first address he uses constitution and law heavily, while his second he uses war and God more frequently.

This site was really cool, and though I find reading old presidential addresses to be pretty dry, it was actually entertaining to see all the previous president's most used words in relation to what was going on in the U.S. and the world.

How I Write

When we were assigned to write about your writing style; I thought it'd be easy to explain, but I tend to have different styles of writing for different purposes. For one, when I am required to write an essay for a history class or a science class my style tends to get a bit more professional and sophisticated. My word choice becomes more wordy and complicated, and to be honest, a bit more boring. Though, if I am assigned a paper for an English class I let myself have a more personalized writing style.

For now, my I write how I write. I guess you could say I write in my own voice, but my personality hasn't been able to be seen through my writing quite yet. For the past couple years all the papers I've written have been historical DBQ's for AP European History, research papers, and book reviews. So I'm quite thankful for AP Comp and the different essay's we'll be assigned. With this classI hope to be able to further explore and develope my style.