Proposal—Save a Language!

Israel http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bjf

Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic

It was spoken among 8 Jewish families in the 1950s in Israel which eventually decreased in the number of people speaking since it was such a small amount of speakers to begin with.

The language is considered extinct because the last speaker died, but branched from this language was many other http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barzani_Jewish_Neo-Aramaic#Origin_and_use_today and these, but since there is no original speakers left its hard for them to relate to the dialect of the original language. This is a effective and ineffective method, because if they are able to somehow use new the languages that branched from the original they may able to get understanding of Barzani Jewish Neo-Aarmaic languages though and hopefully be able to read the surviving documents. Though it seems ineffective and unlikely that they'll ever be able to speak it since the dialect is so different from most languages.

The image above is a original document that is surviving of the language: http://img.search.com/thumb/b/b9/Targum.jpg/320px-Targum.jpg

Investigation—Knowledge in Symbols

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/54/5432.html (could not find another image)

1. What is(are) the cultural origin(s) of the symbol?

The symbols origins date back to the guardian of the underworld which who was Pluto and this symbol now refers to that of the planet Pluto.

2. Describe the knowledge portrayed by the symbol.

The symbol portrays that of Pluto (planet) its a short hand type thing to use the symbol since it's a abbervation of the word.

3. Is the symbol emotive, ambiguous or vague?

I say its ambiguous because when using it someone may refer to the god Pluto rather than the planet even though the symbols origin's were for the planet mostly rather than the god, some still might use it for both since the planet name came from the god.

4. What are the problems of knowledge you identify for the symbol?

Humans like to use the symbol as other meanings rather than the planet Pluto, they were used in all time which make sence, the planet wasn't discovered until 1930s. Hence why there are problems with identifying with the symbol because over the years many ambiguous meanings had araised from it.

TOK perception essay

Gabe Roderick

TOK G1

5 March 2010

B. How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect sense perceptions? How, if at all, can factors that bias our views of the world be identified? Do knower’s have a moral duty to examine their own perceptual filters?

Expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect our sense perception by causing us to have predetermined our outcome on how we perceive. However this isn’t the case for those who can identify with the biases faced with looking at views on the world. Knowers that can identify with these biases are able to examine their own perceptual filters but this isn’t always the case so it is not indeed a moral duty.

As a knower, I face many expectations, assumptions and beliefs that affect my personal sense perception, sometimes this predetermines our outcome on how we perceive. I hear from other IB students that CAS is hard to do, so when I began my junior year I had the expectations that CAS will be a hard requirement for me to do. Due to my senses as a human this expectation made me feel as if I would see CAS as hard from hearing it was hard which hearing is the other sense involved. Another example is our own personal racism; is incident where two Sturgis students were accused of spraying racial slurs, myself began to believe it was a Neo-Nazi type thing but more importantly someone of German decent knowing the history of Germany. Those were my expectations and I assumed my expectations and assumptions had to be true but once I found out this wasn’t the case and they weren’t German I realized what had happen and tried desperately to avoid these expectations and assumptions from resurfacing again. However these assumptions and expectations of a place can be avoided, though its human nature and nature of perception to try to predetermine expectations on something and come up with assumptions that may or may not be true, to overcome this it’s possible for someone as a knower to keep an open mind about things and try their best not to predetermine these things before experiencing them.

It is very difficult to identify our bias on something, it involves a great about of thinking that a knower must do a lot in order to be a better perceiver then the usual amount of people when thinking. A personal experience with overcoming my own personal bias, is going to a school with a minority, even though the majority of the schools children where the minority. To elaborate on my example, I went to school where the minority of children were either, Mexican or African American, and they were always getting suspend, gang battles, drug deals, had no intention of learning etc. It felt like the cops were a part of the population of the school. Then upon coming to Sturgis this wasn’t the case, I had come in with an open mind to learn but a closed mine on the minorities do to my own personal bias. It took me about 3 months into Sturgis to learn that it wasn’t the case about the minorities and they were here for the same reason I was to learn. I had seen that it was my own bias that stopped me from seeing this earlier. It is hard to identify because change isn’t something we like to do especially when it comes to older people as well. Though some can identify with biases don’t always believe it’s a moral duty to admit to them. Look at the AOK science and ethics. In the science part people have been arguing for years over evolution people, with faith vs. science. Over the years with this debate I’m sure personal bias have been surfaced in a knower though they might have not felt it a moral duty in a sense to examine it rather than ignore it and go along with what they believe and perceive, even though both sides had “evidence”. The quotations are around evidence because it may or may not be true due to us being blinded by personal biases such as fossil records which species do it represent one may see it to represent the species they are looking for due to the visual observations and the brain telling the person what they are truly seeing or what it wants you to see not just what you’re eyes are seeing. Also for ethics, is it morally wrong to kill someone in a vegetated state because their brain responds “yes” when you ask them, human bias definitely play a role in this, since we have technology and science to prove that this is happening we can overcome our bias to know were doing the right or wrong thing. I personally agree and believe in this because I’ve seen family and friends suffer through pain when I wished it was as easy for them to end it by saying yes. So if scientists are able to extensively prove that a vegetated patient is able to respond “yes” to wanted to die then they have every right to as a human. I know it’s a personal bias because of personal experiences and I know due to these experiences I assume as patients like this with no chance of recovery want to be killed when this isn’t the truth in all cases. As for examining the perceptual filters I don’t believe personally as a knower that it’s our moral duty.

However it truly all depends on the knower and their overall perception of WOK. For example people who can reason we’ll and can remove emotions which are WOK from the perceiving it is their moral duty overall others to examine the perpetual filters of themselves.

Word Count- 916

Glossary-

Ethics- the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.:medical ethics; Christian ethics.

Natural Sciences- a science or knowledge of objects or processes observable in nature, as biology or physics, as distinguished from the abstract or theoretical sciences, as mathematics or philosophy.

Knower- to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty: I know the situation fully.

Perception- the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.

Bibliography

Company, Houghton Mifflin. Know. 2009. 26 February 2010 .

—. Perception. 2002. 26 February 2010 .

Mifflin, Houghton. Natural Sciences. 2002. 26 February 2010 .

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Ethics. 2002. 26 February 2010 .

TOK perception Essay B

https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr5spt6_36dsvcbsfz

TOK Blog Project

The AOK that can fit me the best is History and the WOK that fits me as a knower is Sense Perception.

History best fits me as a knower because in my own personal experiences I lived through events that have repeated themselves. Such as 9/11 living through this experience has helped me able to connect with people who were involved or lived through Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, since these people and I have all lived through these tragic events. Sense Perception is also a something that best fits me as a knower; my own personal experience was shared with my TOK class during our trial with the Perception Test back in early 2010. This is a experience because this test but my own perceptions to the test seeing if they were able to perceive things. Also my other personal experience is ever since I was a child I am terrible with people’s names but have a great memory. But I do remember people’s face with a specific color that comes about whenever I see. For some reason when my eyes “see” someone my brain always perceives them as a color that I remember easier than their names. Of course I’ve spent years trying to remember people by their name not their color and sometimes I have messed up and said the color, but this also effects how I perceive colors in Art because I might call a certain color a name of a person who I call that color when I myself and speaking to them.

Glossary:

History - the branch of knowledge dealing with past events. (The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.)

Sense Perception - n. Perception by or based on stimulation of the senses. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Images:

This picture above best describes me as a knower because it's in four quadrants and in multi colors just as a perceive things in different lights essentially. My perception of the AOK and WOK is kind of like the image of me above because people will see and perceive me differently upon looking at this image.

TOK Blog Project

The AOK that can fit me the best is History and the WOK that fits me as a knower is Sense Perception.

History best fits me as a knower because in my own personal experiences I lived through events that have repeated themselves. Such as 9/11 living through this experience has helped me able to connect with people who were involved or lived through Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, since these people and I have all lived through these tragic events. Sense Perception is also a something that best fits me as a knower; my own personal experience was shared with my TOK class during our trial with the Perception Test back in early 2010. This is a experience because this test but my own perceptions to the test seeing if they were able to perceive things. Also my other personal experience is ever since I was a child I am terrible with people’s names but have a great memory. But I do remember people’s face with a specific color that comes about whenever I see. For some reason when my eyes “see” someone my brain always perceives them as a color that I remember easier than their names. Of course I’ve spent years trying to remember people by their name not their color and sometimes I have messed up and said the color, but this also effects how I perceive colors in Art because I might call a certain color a name of a person who I call that color when I myself and speaking to them.

Glossary:

History - the branch of knowledge dealing with past events. (The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.)

Sense Perception - n. Perception by or based on stimulation of the senses. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Images:

This picture above best describes me as a knower because it's in four quadrants and in multi colors just as a perceive things in different lights essentially. My perception of the AOK and WOK is kind of like the image of me above because people will see and perceive me differently upon looking at this image.