The Optical Illusion of 2011

Apparently this optical illusion is the best of 2011. What do you think?

This reminded me of that exercise we had in class about optical illusions and thought I would share. It's also funny because the article quotes Obi Wan Kenobi who once told Luke Skywalker: "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."haha

Farewell

Goodbye to everyone. It was wonderful having you all in class with me. I really enjoyed listening to the conversations and all the activities we did together were fun (especially this last activity; who doesn't love drawing pretty pictures in place of an exam?).

i hope my Western Thought II class next year is just as fun. : )

Ta-Da!

We made it! Congrats to Drew and Lance on their excellent presentations! You both chose very challenging angles and maintained grace under the pressure of public speaking. It was very clear you both allotted a great deal of thought to your ideas. And especially congratulations to the whole class! I really enjoyed this little glimpse into the minds of my classmates: each presentation seemed to reveal a bit of the inner-workings of the presenter. Now, here we are, our first year of college over, and, for most of us, another one soon to begin. I look forward to seeing what all of you will create in the coming years!

It's Over!

It's all finally over. The only thing left is for the people now to edit their papers, but the presentations are all over. How wonderful.



I enjoyed how Drew's ideas changed and how he showed us that they changed, from what is reality more into a what is knowledge type of adventure. It was interesting to see the process he went through in order to make these changes and realize that he himself didn't believe in what he originally set out to prove.

As for Lance, well, that accent was fabulous and amusing, I almost hardly paid attention to the presentation... Just kidding. The flow of coherent ideas was nice, and the interaction he put into us, the audience, was also nice as well. Even if I had to sip coffee, I thought the little experiment was fun in trying to deceive our senses and this preconceived idea we might have about some object.

Hey, presentations are over!
Good job, everyone.

It's cool how what we think we believe in changes so much with a little bit of deeper contemplation. I wonder what other of our beliefs we would change if we took the time to really think about it? I also love that, no matter how wide the range of our topics, you can see the common threads and thought patterns.
I wonder how different our presentations would have been if we had done them at the beginning of the semester?

It's really interesting how the nature of a paper/presentation changes from the beginning to the end. It's so easy to start out with a plan to prove a specific point, and in the process of writing, you end up arguing something else completely. In some ways this could be a good thing, but in a few cases I think it wound up working against the speaker. While trying to write out the thinking process, there ended up being contradictions, and thoughts that disproved the original point.
After the presentations are over, there is enough time to revise the paper, to either steer it in another direction, or to edit out the contradictions. I hope the class provided enough constructive criticism for any possible improvements to be easy to reach.