Team Leaders and Team Members

The topic that I found that was interesting this week from the reading is team leaders and team members. Often times these two groups are confused and is important to have these kinds of members in every group. A team leader is someone that takes charge. They make sure the group is on task and is the one to make the initiation for the group to meet. The team leader makes sure everyone has a specific job, and is getting the job done. A productive group member is a member that does what is ask of them. They are on ask and do what is needed to help the group out to complete the task. Team members need to get along with each other because it will lead to a more productive workplace. Team members do work that has been evenly split between all of the people in the group. I am personally more of a team member kind of person. I enjoy letting other people take charge of the group. I can easily get along with people, and work very well with people. What kind a group member are you?

Smoking among children and teens

Dr. Novello is a surgeon general in the United States. She was trying to reduce the use of tobacco among teens and children. Dr. Novello uses cause and effect inductive reasoning when she states that the number of children and teens that smoke has increased since there has been ads that promoted cigarettes. She also states that there needs to be more education on smoking. Cause would be banning ads about smoking and more education on teen smoking. The effect would be less teenagers smoking. She uses the cause and effect method to tell us how smoking among teens and children is a big problem in our society today. I believe that it is important for teens and children to be aware of the dangers of smoking at a young age. There are many kids that smoke because they want to fit in with a specific social group without thinking about the danger they are causing their bodies. It will be a huge problem later in their lives if they get addicted to cigarettes, so it is good for them to be educated early.

Inductive Argument

An inductive argument is where the premises support the conclusion. If the premises are true, it makes it improbable that the conclusion would be false. There has to be at least two premises. An inductive argument that I just made the other day was that my new tattoo was going to cost $375.

-Marks of Art tattoo charges $125 an hour (premise)

-Scotty, the tattoo artist, told me that it was going to take 3 hours to completely finish my tattoo. (premise)

-Therefore, my new tattoo will end up costing my $375. (conclusion)

This example is a inductive reasoning because if both of the premises are true, then it is impossible for my conclusion to be false. If one of the premises were not true, than it would make the conclusion not true. The premises are what is most important while using this argument. Inductive reasoning is a good way to argue because it is supports the conclusion with facts. 

Chain Arguments

Chain arguments occur when there are at least three statements linked together. There are two statements that are true that link together to come into one concluding statement. The structure towards chain arguments are A to B, B to C, and then A is to C. Chain arguments require concrete facts to be effective. If there are not facts then it will not make the conclusion of the two statements true. Chain arguments are very effective in writing. I usually use chain arguments to get my point across if give the readers facts to support an argument. An example of chain argument is that Girls like makeup. Susie likes makeup. Therefore, Susie is a girl. This is a real basic example, but it gets the point across. I think that chain arguments are the most effective way to argue because the conclusion is based upon facts. There is no way to disagree with the arguments if there are facts that back up the concluding statements. 

Chapter 8 pg 241

I think what Watson means is that it does not matter what facts there are that disagrees with an individual’s belief; the individual will always continue to believe whatever they want to believe. Facts will never change the belief of individuals because every person just chooses what they want to believe. For example if someone believe that the Golden State Warriors are the best team in the NBA, but fact and statistics curly shows that the Oklahoma City Thunder are the best team in the league. Even though all the facts are there the Warrior fan will continue to believe that the Warriors are the best no matter what. I believe that Watson is correct because I see it happen a lot with myself. For example, there are a lot of different cars out there. My favorite car by far is the Evolution 9 made by Mitsubishi. When my mom and I were looking to buy a car for me the first car in my mind was the Evolution 9. While we were researching there were a lot of other cars that had better gas mileage, were faster, and has less mileage on the car. Even though we found all of these other cars that were statically better, I still thought that the Evolution 9 was the best car. 

Perspectives on the Death Penalty

The death penalty is a highly controversial topic in our society. I believe that using Jesus' teachings he would be highly against the death penalty. Jesus was never a believer in causing any violance. He would try to get his point across peacefully even when people did not believe he was the savior. The death penalty is causing harm to others. Concluding that Jesus would have not approved in the death penalty. I also do not approve in the death penalty. I believe that two wrongs do not make a right. Just because another person did the wrong thing by killing someone else it does not give us the right be as equally wrong and kill him. I rather have the individual stay in jail for the rest of their lives, so they can thinking about the choices they have made. I think that that would be a more Christian way of acting towards someone doing an act that warrants the death penalty. 

Same sex marriage

I believe that Obama's belief of same sex marriage is very inconsistent, but I can understand where he is coming from since he is in a very hard position. Obama states that constitutionally, marriage should only be between a man and a woman. However, he also supports civil rights movements for same sex marriage. I think that it is smart for President Obama to say that he supports same sex marriage, but does not want to legalize it. He is taking both sides of the fence, so he does not take too much heat from any side. If he was to legalize a law on same sex marriages he would lose a lot of voters that do not support same sex marriage, and the other way around if he was to say he was against same sex marriage. If I was in his situation I would do the same. This solution is not ideal for any side, but it will cause less tension. I believe that individuals should be able to choose whether or not they should get married even if it is the same sex. The world is changing drastically and time goes on, and it is time for that to change. The United States has gone a long way from where it once was; women can now vote, and we not have the first black present. It is time to make this change and take a huge towards equality for all.

Type of Group Roles

There are two kinds of types of ways a member can contribute: task and personal roles. Task roles are task set for individuals that have to do with content. An example of a task roles is an information giver. An information giver offers facts about the subject the group is working on. an administrator is also a task role. A administrator makes sure that everyone stays on track, and makes sure the group accomplished the task on time. These people make sure that the work gets done on time, and all of the information is important and precise. Personal roles are task set for individuals to help the relationship between group members. These people make try to get everyone to get a long, so the group project will be completed on time. An example of a personal role is a harmonizer. A harmonizer is someone that tries to clear the tension between group members from the tension that they might have. A gatekeeper also is a personal task. A gatekeeper tries to keep everyone involved in group decisions. For the most part everyone in the group has both a person and a task role. Usually an individuals role changes in every group, because everyone is different. When I am in a group I usually try to take on both task and personal roles. I usually try to be the information giver and the gatekeeper.

Critical Thinking Situation

I believe that everyone has their own right to be able to make their own choices and have their own opinions. Often times peer pressure seems to change ones act in one way or another. Their have been plenty of times when I was put into these kinds of situations. While I was a senior in high school everyone in my group of friends started to do cocaine. Every party that we went to their were people doing it in the rooms. Up until winter break I was not really pressured into doing it because for the most part my friends knew my morals, and they knew that I would not do it. However, it all changed when we decided to go to a party in downtown Campbell. We were all in a room pre gaming, and all of a sudden one of my friends pulled out a bag of coke. Everyone in the room was down to do it, but I did not want to do it, so I just sat their silently. They started to take turns doing lines on the table. After everyone took a hit, it was finally my turn. Everyone was telling me to do it. In my head I was thinking how I didn't want to do it, but if I didn't do it I might lose all of my friends. I hesitated for a second. Then one guy says, "Hey Eric do a line, you wont." Then I thought to myself if they don't want to be my friends just because I don't want to do coke then they rant really my friends anyways, so I told them that I didn't want to do it. They just continued to take turns doing lines. It turns out that I made it a bigger deal than it really was.