Pink think and Geek think

The concept “pink think” brought about by Lynn Peril seems to be very much alive in our society today. Our society is surrounded by pink think in advertising, with nearly every other ad glamorizing products with near pornographic images of models. However the biggest promoter of pink think would probably be popular beauty pageants such as Miss America and Miss universe. These pageants go about by first determining weather or not the contestants are beautiful enough to go onto the further rounds by letting them show off their bodies in wide variety of revealing and excessively expensive swim-suits, dresses, and night gowns. After making it to the final rounds, the contestants are then asked what they would do to help solve various world problems. Of course, this idea that because one contestant looks better than fifty others that look nearly identical in appearance provides for hilarious responses showing their true intellect. These pageants are the standard that many women in society find their pink think ideals from. They create the image that women that want to change the world should also look great in high-heals and underwear. Of course, these pageants are reflected upon today’s society. Younger girls are now wearing more revealing clothes and reading more about how they can fit into these impossible standards. More girls are looking up to these models and have come to behave like them, because its become the standard for society. We see it everyday in advertisement, and even see it appealing to younger audiences with cartoons such as Bratz or Barbie. Children of course know nothing better than to mimic their idols, and this is reflected in their behavior.

Geek think on the other hand seems to be a stereotype that is dying. Often portrayed in movies of the 80’s and 90’s as the chess-playing losers of school with large glasses, pocket protectors, and their own handy calculator pouch for quick mathematical solving, geeks have since then become more accepted in society. I believe this so because of the growing popularity in electronics and technology. While the top-of-the-class members of the computer club were once terrorized by jocks, they now have come to find a new friendship with one another. In our age, we are surrounded by popular electronic devices, such as cell phones, video games, computers, and mp3 players, which need regular repair. For the electronically challenged, geeks provide their vast knowledge of electronics willingly. It seems that the geek has come to be accepted because our society is becoming more and more dependent on electronic knowledge. As this is happening, geeks are starting to blend in with non-geeks. It’s becoming popular to be good with electronics and to get good grades in school. The video game industry is attracting even more geeks and is growing rapidly with the video games such as Halo, which is setting sales records exceeding a billion dollars. Geek think is a concept which encourages people to become more knowledgeable about their surroundings. Geek think is becoming even more influential over society as we realize that knowledge is power. One day, we will all be geeks.

reflections on milblog

Before I started this class, I didn’t think a lot about the Iraq War. As with most things in life, if it doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t matter a great deal. I never have really felt strongly about taking a stance to one side or another, because I never really tried to keep up on the news. I have always felt that the news is a greatly biased source of information, and is always directed to convince you to believe one thing or another rather than to actually try to present stories in an unbiased fashion. War is of course, a necessary cost of freedom, but can always be an excessive tool of greed as well. I never really decided which one this war was and never really cared.

This milblog helped me to feel more towards the war, but really did not sway my attitude towards it one way or the other. So many of these stories from the milblog are so moving and touching, and can’t help but make you feel happy or sad. They also have given me new light on the life of a soldier which I have found to be rather interesting and far from the stereotyped vision I had before. They also give a much less biased view of what actually goes on than what the news seems to. This milblog has definitely been the most worth-while assignment I have done in my educational career.

definitions

I would define serious literature as any literature that is not for the purpose of enjoyment, but rather enlightenment on a subject relating to human nature. If a graphic novel can reveal something about human nature, then I would say it is serious literature, but to say all graphic novels are serious literature is a very large statement which would need someone to analyze each and every novel and determine if indeed they reveal something about human nature.

A hate crime might be defined as a crime against a specific group of people. Burning a nation’s flag would imply that the hate crime is against that nation. Assuming of course that to burn that nation’s flag is a crime.

A royal family is one that consists of royal blood, or descended from a sovereign family line. To say that the Bushes have become America’s royal family is a fairly unsupported statement. To say that because George W. Bush and his father were president creates a sovereign family line is a slim, but valid statement, because a line only needs to consist of two points (George and his father.)

A journalist is merely someone who journals or writes about observations. To say that Matt Drudge and Larry Flynt are legitimate journalists are to assume that they legitimately wrote about their observations.

Big businesses is a very vague definition. A big business in America would be McDonalds, whereas a big business in a third-world country to could be a flee market. That is because big is a comparative term, not a definite term. You can say a mouse is big or small, depending on weather comparing it to a bug or an elephant. So to say college sports programs have become big businesses could be a valid statement, if comparing it to other businesses smaller than it.

I would define civil disobedience as willfully disobeying in order to create a point about a rule. To say plagiarism could be an act of civil disobedience could be true. If the purpose of plagiarism was to make a point that the information was already stolen, then it could perhaps be defined as plagiarism. If it were used to simply not have to write a paper, I would say it would not be civil disobedience.

A religion is merely beliefs with rules on how to live life. Saying Satanism is a religion is a proper statement, assuming that the religion has certain beliefs regarding life.

Free speech is being able to say what you want without consequences. To say campaign contributions are acts of free speech would be wrong. Campaign contributions are physical, whereas speech is audible. To say you will do something and to do something are two different things, which is presented here.

A state is simply a territory of the government. An American State on the other hand has more requirements than just the territory of the government, such as a certain number people and proper representation.

Marriage is the union of a man and a woman. To say gay and lesbian couples should have the legal privileges of marriage is a valid statement, because it does not say that gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry. To be able to marry, they need the criteria of a man and a woman, not a man and a man or a woman and a woman.

Coldgay

I probably would have given this an essay an A because I agree with it so much. Of course, without my biased opinion, I believe the content in backing up claims would receive a grade of somewhere between B and a C. The paper had the feel like Jon Parales had a grudge against Mr. Martin. While Pareles makes his claim against Cold Play, he only uses a single album as his defense. Aside from Mr. Martin’s voice and lyrics, he only seems to criticize very minor aspects of the album which he views as flaws. He even defends the instrumental ability of the band by saying that they have “mastered all the mechanics of pop songwriting.” The structure of his writing also makes his arguments less convincing, as he devotes one paragraph to ranting on how awful Mr. Martin’s lyrics are or voice is, while he turns around to praises their instrumental genius or compares them to much greater bands the next. He also devotes three paragraphs to show how popular they have grown (which doesn’t give any real argument as to why Coldplay shouldn’t be considered a good band), in what seems like a cheap-shot attempt to gain sympathy from the loner/anti-bandwagon crowd. Aside from lyric quotes, their was no real evidence to support any of his claims. Pareles made to big of a claim that coldplay is “the most insufferable band of the decade,” and failed to back any of it up. His only real argument was that Mr. Martin can’t sing well, and Mr. Martin has bad lyrics, which took him an entire paper to rant about instead of making a convincing argument in a couple of well supported paragraphs. This is why I would give Parales a B to a C.

Navajo Rugs and Peyton Manning

There are many factors that go into evaluating an NFL quarterback. The main judge of an NFL quarterback would be his statistics and quarterback rating. There are many statistics which contribute to a quarterback rating. Passing yards, touchdowns, interceptions, and sacks are just a few of the many statistics on quarterbacks. By looking at several quarterbacks’ statistics, you can determine the better quarterback by which quarterback has the better numbers. Other factors that could be used to help determine a quarterback’s quality would be when they were selected in the draft, their income, and experience.

I know absolutely nothing about Navajo rugs, but if I wanted to, I could probably find ways to distinguish between a Navajo rug, and a bad Navajo rug. I would first see what factors determine the quality of making these rugs. I’m guessing that the fabric or material involved, the design of the rug, and the quality of quilting, stitching, or however one fuses the material together would be good for distinguishing between a high-quality Navajo rug, and low-quality Navajo rug.

Circlemakers.org

Circlemakers.org is a very well designed website. The main page is organized very logically and chunks the information very conveniently. The font, despite being a little hard to read, makes the text seem out of this world, which seems appropriate assuming the site’s main audience is a bunch of alien-loving conspiracy-theorists. The same background dark blue background with odd geometric objects is used on each page furthering the science feel of the website. Each topic page has large font headings making information easy to find. Even more helpful, when you scroll the mouse over each of the major sub-pages, there is a little description of what they are about in the upper right-hand corner. These aspects of the page make the argument that crop circles are mysterious and interesting, and you should read more about them. I found myself curious to what information the page had, just because of these tiny details that contributed to the appearance of the page. I was fascinated by the pictures of crop circles and from their, I was led into the other articles of the site. I bought into what the site was trying to sell, because it made a great visual argument just by having an attractive format.

Drug Abuse

The image I choose was by Clarence Williams of the Los Angeles Times. This is just one of the many photographs he took that documented the plight of young children with parents addicted to alcohol and drugs. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for the category feature photography. I thought the image created a powerful argument on the effect of drugs on children. You can see clearly the innocence of the little girl and how her entire world is cramped around her. From the caption we know that they are living in a shed, and the two women that are awake are using drugs while the child sleeps peacefully. The angel of the shot from above creates a feeling of smallness and the black and white help the viewer to see the sadness. The cluttered and dirty shed reveal the poverty and despair of these people. All of these details create the larger argument and built sympathy within me for people affected by drugs. This picture helped me to see this girl had nothing to do with the situation she is in. And it helped me to realize that there are many others like her who are as helpless as she is. This photograph won me over.

Milblogs4

The soldier from the first milblog I read this week talked about his “alive day.” He had never heard of an “alive day” and neither had I, but it was the title from an HBO special where wounded soldiers told about their near death war experiences. The soldier had almost been hit by an RPG. He described the moment as if he had transcended time and all the laws of physics were broken. He decided to get the date of his alive day tattooed on his fore arm as a reminder. Although his story was fascinating, I found the most relevant part to be his conclusion, which was that even a bad day alive is better than a good day being dead. It reminded me of how ungrateful I am sometimes over little things in life and how I should be more thankful for the time I have.

The next milblog was an excellent slideshow put together by an operations officer. The slideshow had “Like a Rock,” by Bob Seager playing as the pictures progressed. The slideshow showed a lot of happy pictures of soldiers and what they do everyday. Some pictures showed soldiers drinking, soldiers joking, soldiers repairing vehicles, soldiers posing with weapons, and just soldiers enjoying themselves. It was a very happy look at the soldiers in Iraq.

The last post I read was by an RN. She posted about 9/11 and about remembering the terrified people running down the street and all the other events that happened that day. The smoke and black clouds made her realize that day that this country was no longer safe. She took part in a freedom walk to remember the victims and the soldiers who gave their lives for our freedom. A marine told her during the walk that he was often asked why although he has been on three tours already he still wants to go back, and he said this (referring to the march) is the reason why. I thought it was great to see a march out of respect like this going on.

My Wiki!

Here is the link for my wiki. Right now my wiki is a very basic couple of pages devoted to me. I currently have a list of music I enjoy, and within the list are hyper-links to the artists' web pages. My wiki reminds me very much of a myspace.com or facebook.com account, but I can see how it has potential to grow into a much more informative page. Wiki's in general have an amazing capability to house a nearly infinite amount of information. I wrote an entire blog on wikipedia.com and how its the most efficient and effective encyclopedia there is. So far, I have only a couple of pictures on my wiki of me, my drum set, and my piano, and only have several hyper-links to band websites. The process of creating this wiki is going well so far, and I think my wiki will continue to grow into a helpful resource as I start to put other information on it other than about me.

Milblogs3

This week I read three happy milblogs. One of the blogs, airborneparainf82.blogspot.com, went through a seemingly average day with several potential situations for danger. Eddie, the blogger, began by telling his agenda, which was to check out some banks in the sector. He tried to get his own bank account, but couldn’t because they didn’t allow Americans to have accounts. From there he heard an explosion in a car garage which he went to help with. At night, his troop went on a raid and heard several shots fire, but nothing escalated. I thought it was neat that Eddie tried to open an account just to say he had an account in Iraq. I was glad it wasn’t a sad story and his troop made it safely through the night. Another blog, desertflier.blogspot.com, talked about a ice day he had where he was invited with others to a part of Ramadia by the Euprates for weapon range time. The place happened to be one of Saddam’s general’s house which was rather luxurious. Most of the time, I believe people imagine the Middle East as they see it on T.V., lots of abandoned buildings and poverty. This article helped me to see there is more than the ruin that we generally see on television. Another blog helped me to realize that it’s not just some desolate desert, actuepolitics.blogspot.com. The author described the landscape in an almost poetic manner, and was very descriptive. I liked this blog the most, because it showed the soldier’s hope and how you can either look at what’s around you as bad, or good, and this soldier choose good. All these blogs helped show me just how much hope there still is when everything seems so gloomy.

Political Blog

I went to dailykos.com where the blogger, kos, criticized the Abercrombie Bill with support from the article “House Dems signal a shift on Iraq plans.” The Abercrombie Bill, as put by Mike Soraghan, “would order Bush to draft plans to withdraw from Iraq but not require them to be implemented.” Kos’s blog,“pre-emptive capitulation in the House, as well,” points out the fallacies in the Abercrombie Bill to prove his points that “Democrats have to pre-emptively surrender for fear that ‘some’ might criticize them.”
The blog first points out that the article shows the support for the bill, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (a Democrat) is in favor of the bipartisan legislation, along with the authors of the bill, Neil Abercrombie and John Tanner (also Democrats). The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat), already put the Abercrombie Bill off before Congress’s break in August. The article claimed that Pelosi has “been encouraging Democratic representatives to employ any personal relationships they’ve developed with Republicans to find bipartisan ideas for Iraq legislation.”
After pointing out these major Democratic players, the blog shows the fallacy in the Abercrombie Bill. Kos made the rhetorical question “does this bill even pass the logic test?” While he does not go on to show the non sequitur in the bill, it is easy to see. The purpose of a bill is to become a law, and then to have that law enforced to create a positive change. This bill requires the president only to create a plan for troop withdrawal; the bill doesn’t require that he actually goes through with his plan.
Kos then uses a statement made from Pelosi, “We probably will take it (the Abercrombie Bill) up with another piece of legislation that I’m not about to announce right now,” This statement shows that she is not even certain that she will take up a bill that does nothing out of fear of offending. Furthermore, the article commented on how Pelosi has been encouraging bipartisan relationships. Even though the bill has had bipartisan support, Pelosi shied away from it, and is only now looking to possibly bring it to the floor. Kos points out that Pelosi has been searching for bipartisan support in vain, because Democrats control both the House and the Senate.
To sum up the argument, Kos plainly showed that the Democrats do not need this bill. Aside from the point that the bill does nothing, he makes the points that Democrats don’t need bipartisanism to get a bill passed, and furthermore, there is already some bipartisanism on the issue of the safest troop withdrawal. Kos then concluded by stating the two well-known Democrats running for president, Clinton and Obama, are also afraid of the issue and its possible effect on their campaign, so they are sticking to “banal fluff.” After looking over the article, it is easy to see that Kos utilized the best points in the article to make his argument. Examining the situation further, Democrats have had control now since 2006, and have still failed to take noticeable action. Even now, they continue to debate over a bill that does nothing for the war effort. Overall, Kos made well-supported and convincing arguments on Democrats fearing criticism.

Advertisements Dehumanize Women

Jean Kilbourne used many different strategies to help deliver her persuasive speech on advertising. She used effective and startling statistics, pictures, video clips, and humor to show the negative influence advertising on women.
The presentation was logically organized utilizing diction, straightforward syntax, and memorable arguments. There were no run-on sentences or parts of the speech that were difficult to understand. Jean spoke very clearly and fluctuated her tone to emphasize certain arguments. Each point was backed up effectively by verbal as well as visual evidence. The speech itself logically progressed from the beginning by simply showing the rise in advertising costs to the more effective arguments of how advertising has dehumanized women, created an unobtainable ideal which has helped increase eating disorders, and has even gone as far as to glamorize battering.
However, to make her points effective, Jean used visual arguments. Her bar graph in the beginning gave a visual representation where numbers fail audibly. After which, she simply used advertising against itself to argue her point. She showed how women are dehumanized through video clips and pictures how most of the time the focus of the advertisement is a women’s body or part of a women’s body. Sickly skinny women were also presented to show her point that women desire to look like these models, because simply saying that women are skinny would not have been as effective. She then used ads that portrayed beaten and battered women in a glamorous way to show how truly negative the advertising of women has become.
Jean’s delivery of the speech was just as effective as were the visuals involved. She had dressed professionally, while not too much to distract her audience. As I had mentioned before, she fluctuated her tone to emphasize certain points in her arguments, and also spoke fluidly. She maintained eye contact throughout the presentation and by doing so showed how well she knew the subject of her speech. The presentation of her arguments was as essential to persuading her audience as was the arguments themselves.
I thought that the last points Jean made on the glamorization of battering were most effective. I had always seen the dehumanizing of women, but had never seen advertising that had glamorized abuse. This really pointed out to me just how far the dehumanizing of women in advertising has undergone. The pictures startled me, and made me feel sympathetic to the victims of such horrible advertisements.
Overall, the presentation I felt was very effective. Jean made very effective and convincing arguments as well as statistics to defend the points she made. However, it seemed as though she were only addressing women. Although she called on everyone to help the cause in the end, her presentation seemed very much toward the female audience. It would have been more appealing to a male audience if she had even mentioned men in advertising as well. Also, she did not present any actions to undertake in the end of her presentation to stop negative advertising. I felt that advertising was bad, but then I did not know what to do help fight against the dehumanization in advertising. Aside from these points, I felt the speech was tremendously effective and well-delivered.

wikipedia.com

Wikipedia.com is a website that I go to whenever I need knowledge on just about anything. Then name itself is a combination of a wiki, and an encyclopedia. A wiki is an internet-based collaboration of information which can be modified by its users. The combination of the wiki and encyclopedia has made wikipedia.com vastly popular, but also extremely convenient.
The internet provides wikipedia.com with many advantages over regular encyclopedias. The first advantage is its enormous amount of information. Where encyclopedia volumes normally cover a single subject (such as World War II), wikipedia.com covers all subjects that its millions of users have shared (which is nearly every subject covered by any encyclopedia). Its second advantage of wikipedia.com being on the internet is its hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are parts of text that allow users to access another internet article based on the text they clicked. Hyperlinks are a much more efficient and quicker way to find information that it would be to look up the word and find the page number in a regular encyclopedia. Furthermore, you can find a much more extensive amount of information from wikipedia.com than most encyclopedias.
To transfer the information of wikipedia.com into printed text would be impossible. Where an encyclopedia contains very detailed information about one subject, wikipedia.com contains very detailed information about nearly every subject. Wikipedia.com currently contains a little less than two million articles. Assuming each article averages two pages (which is a safe under-estimation), a printed version of wikipedia.com would be four million pages. It would not be physically possible to create this, nor would it be convenient to locate any articles.
Wikipedia.com is a great source of information and does what printed information cannot. It significantly reduces research time, while also providing more details about related subjects. Although it has these many advantages, it has one weakness which is credibility. Because it is a wiki, anyone is allowed to alter any articles content. By allowing anyone to edit it, the truth can be changed into false information. However, Wikipedia.com does have guidelines that must be followed in order to make changes, and quickly finds and corrects vandalized articles. Wikipedia.com is the ultimate encyclopedia.

Milblogs 2

This week I read two more soldier stories. One soldier told about his own departure to Iraq nearly a year ago, and how he felt like he was leaving everything behind. As he was leaving, a fellow soldier passed by and asked if he was staying or leaving. When he said going, the other soldier pulled a laminated four-leaf clover out of his wallet and told him that it had been given to him by another soldier. Nearly a year later he was returned home, and this time he met a soldier who was going to Iraq. He gave the clover to him, and made the point that it’s better to pay it forward than backward. I thought this story was really cool, just because of the simple things that seem to make a difference.
Another soldier told his story about a Romanian soldier who was his friend. Wherever he was stationed, the Romanian soldier had constructed a wall and had been asking other soldiers for patches to put on the wall. The post had pictures of the wall and was really cool to see. It looked like there were around fifteen to twenty patches from different countries. It seemed to bring a message of global unity and just made me feel like there is still good going on in the world. I enjoyed these stories even better than the ones I read last week. They seemed to convey lots of hope even through all thats going on. As always, God bless what these soldiers do.