Hard as a Rock Writing
Can anyone ever create a “new” writing technology from items found in nature? Is it possible to “invent” something to write with and on that had not been thought of in the past? These were the questions I pondered as I sat outside my house wondering what to do for my “Invent Your Own Technology” project. At first, I thought I would somehow distill the pollen from the daffodils growing in my front yard. Then I wondered, “What could I use to write on with my new yellow “ink”? How long would it last? And what could I write with?”. After that I explored the idea of binding twigs together with weeds and creating letters. I could create a portable alphabet this way. Then again, without a permanent base to affix my letters to, they would scatter with the wind. After yesterday’s wind, I am glad I decided against that idea.
Finally, after much deliberation and searching in my yard, I came upon a lasting idea. I was sitting in the grass and suddenly spotted a very sharp stone. “If only I could find something to etch my words into”, I mused. It was then that I came across a much larger, dark, flat stone. Then I experimented. Indeed, I could use one stone to “write” on the other stone.
The idea was simple. It was almost too simple. My initial questions rushed back to me. Certainly, this writing technology was not new. However, anything I could think of would not be new. It might be a new use of materials for me, but ultimately, somewhere, someone at one time or another has thought to use flowers for ink, dried reeds for parchment, a stick as a stylus, and stones to carve words on to other stones. Even as a child, I remember using shells to write words and draw pictures in the sand at the beach.
Suddenly, what to write became the focus of my internal debate. Then I remembered Mark Twain reminiscing, in his article “The First Writing Machines” about sitting at his typewriter typing over and over, “The boy stood on the burning deck” (501). Could it be that the technology suddenly became more important then the content of Twain’s writing? Was it the same for me, only in reverse? The technology was so simple; I was at a loss for words.
In the article "the persistence of the word" written by James Gleick, he argues that writing is the hardest technology to erase from our mind. Writing made knowledge more durable stuff, which represented the roots of human history. The author used one-to-one correspondence methods, link examples with explanations to introduced writing into three categories. First, the way of writing. Writing as a technology requires premeditation and special art, it is a competence forever bodying itself in a series of concrete performance. In ancient times writing usually exists on paper or stone, show our respect to the culture, paper and stone is a kind of tools which can inspired immediate detractors, writing on stone is
One stage of adolescent development that my teen went through was puberty. Puberty is different for girls and boys and is manifested differently as they go through many physical and cognitive changes. As I was raising my teen daughter I noticed that the changes in her body during puberty played a role in the way she viewed herself. By age 11 she became more interested in her appearance as a result of some compliments from some boys in her school. She started to wear makeup to school every day and became more interested in buying new clothes and shoes. As pu...
The majority of people who suffer from anorexia begin, as we did, with an innocent diet that gradually progressed to extreme and unhealthy weight loss (Shaw, 2002). Unlike normal dieting which stops when the desired weight is reached, people who become anorexic atribute positive feelings to their ability to control their weight and become dangerously preoccupied with food and fear weight gain. Research suggests that stringent dieting can play a key role in triggering eating disorders. Adolescent and young adult women are more vulnerable to these disorders due to their tendency to go on strict diets in order to achieve an “ideal” figure (Lehrman, 1987).
One of the wonderful things about the internet is how it makes life much easier if the information can be found in the convenience of the home instead of going to a library and making a day out of it. This is especially true if the internet offers updated information as soon as it happens were as a library may only update a few things every week or month at a time. It is truly remarkable how much information can be found and because of this it isn’t unbelievable that more and more people are using the internet instead of going to a library or using another service the internet can offer them. However, without organization and direction information is useless. Search engines offer this stepping stone by storing all the data in a manor that is searchable. Two of the major search engines are Google.com and Msn.com. Both offer great search engines and services, but have different styles and appeal to different audiences looking for different things.
“Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by weight loss (or lack of appropriate weight gain in growing children); difficulties maintaining an appropriate body weight for height, age, and stature; and, in many individuals, distorted body image,” (Anorexia Nervosa, 2018). Anorexia nervosa can affect people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities. To be diagnosed with anorexia there has to be three criteria’s meet. The first criteria that has to be met is, restriction of energy intake relative to requirements leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health. The second criteria is intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight. The final criteria that needs to be met to be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa is disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight. “In anorexia nervosa’s cycle of self-starvation, the body is denied the essential nutrients it needs to function normally. Thus, the body is forced to slow down all of its processes to conserve energy, resulting in serious medical consequences,” (Anorexia Nervosa, 2018). You are not only hurting your body when you become anorexic, but you are hurting your mind because you are not
The beginning of the illness often follows some stressful life events that have occurred in the person life. Low self-esteem is often the cause of these stresses. Most of the peoples who are anorexic began with some form of diet to lose weight. When the weight loss becomes visible to their own eyes, and to the eyes of others he or she begin to enjoy his or her special ability to master his or her hunger and control his or her life by continuing to diet without realizing the emotional an physical changes it’s causing to his or her body and mind. And that is how the majority of peoples who are diagnosis with the illness became anorexic (American).
Those suffering from Anorexia Nervosa, most often adolescent females, essentially maintain a starving diet and eventually n abnormally low body weight. Anorexia can often start as a diet that quickly spirals out of control as a person becomes obsessed with continuing weight loss while still feeling overweight. The DSM5 delineates two sibtypes of the disorder. The first involves restriction would usually consists of an extremely low-calorie diet, or excessive exercise. The second type is the binge/purge which involves episodes of binge eating, combined with the restriction behavior. And it the low body mass that is the defining characteristic of Anorexia Nervosa. A refusal to maintain a weight at or about what would normally be considered minimally healthy. Another common eating disorder is Bulimia Nervosa. While Anorexia Nervosa is characterized primarily by the refusal to maintain a minimum body weight,
3D printers are the hottest technical tool fabricated from the prototypes first created by Charles Hull in the year 1984. But 3D writing pens are another option portraying the products of your imagination.
Hailed as the archaeological find of modern times they were made out of papyrus or animal skins called gevil and written right to left with no punctuation. In fact there were no spaces between words they simply ran together. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek using ink made from carbon black and white pigments and using birds feathers as writing implements.
was clay. When writing on clay first arose, the scribe would try to make an
Newing (1999) through his research reported that the cuneiform language was inscribed on clay tablets that required a baking process. He also noted that these tablets allowed for permanent records but were not easily transportable. According to Newing, papyrus did not require the baking process and allowed greater portability. He stated that this invention led to the construction of the libraries of Akkad, Elba, and Alexandria (Newing, 1999). According to Newing (1999), the use of parchment started around 200 BC and paper in 100 AD. However, Newing asserted that these forms of media were susceptible to destruction by invading armies. He noted that to ensure the preservation of these documents, monks in monasteries made copies of important documents making them the first knowledge professionals. According to Newing, the invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for the mass distribution of written documents and knowledge at a low cost (Newing, 1999).
As early as 2,800 years before Christ, the pen was beginning to appear as a writing implement in the world. Its first form was that of a dried reed, its tip cut at an angle so to create a line of ink instead of a blot. To write with it, simply dip the cut tip of the reed into an ink supply, then gently press the dipped tip against the paper .
At first, I thought about what our ancestors would have used and depending on how far back we go, this can range from a quill and ink to carving on stone. Looking around my house though, these things weren't easy to find. So, I searched thru the yard looking for anything that might resemble paper. I kept coming back to the leaves hanging on the catalpa tree. I first decided this had to be my paper. It was the closest thing to being flat and the leaves were large enough for my text.
In China, documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo, making them very heavy and awkward to transport. Silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider. Indeed, most of the above materials were rare and costly. While the Chinese court official Cai Lun is widely regarded to have first described the modern method of papermaking (inspired from wasps and bees) from wood pulp in AD 105, the 2006 discovery of specimens bearing written characters in north-west China's Gansu province suggest that paper was in use by the ancient Chinese military more than 100 years before Cai in 8 BCE [1]. Archæologically however, true paper without writing has been excavated in China dating from the 2nd-century BCE.
Fallon, Patricia, Melanie A. Katzman, and Susan C. Wooley, eds. Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders. New York: Guilford Press, 1994.