Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Comparing and Contrasting Cartoons

Fear the Media!

I chose these two cartoons to compare and contrast with each other. These cartoons have similarities but are also different. The similarities between the two is that they both involve fear. The first cartoon is about how media can promote a culture of fear and violence and how it effects certain people over time. Just like you see, over the years the media is promoting fear and violence on the parents, since their son is too young to understand what is going on. Then the cartoon changes in the last square as the child grows up ends up becoming fearful, instead of his parents and he is more involved in the media than his parents are at this point.

In the second cartoon the man is fearful of the cute little twitter bird, meaning he doesn't want to fall into the trap of media. It's like the man is saying "stay away, I don't need to have a Twitter!" It's funny how such a big guy is afraid of the bird, but the bird means so much more since it represent Twitter. The tiny exclamation point next to the bird also says more about the cartoon, as if the bird is saying "I'm going to make you want me!" The second cartoon isn't really about fear and violence in the media, but more of a person who someone would consider to be an anti-consumerism, which relates to our media essay. 








Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Way to Somewhere: Book Review


Author Angie Day

The Way to Somewhere, by Angie Day, was published in 2002 by Simon and Schuster. Pages: 302
What I learned from the book is that to not let anyone come in your way when you want to branch out, travel, experience, and figure yourself out as a person. Whether it means leaving home and family, getting in a little trouble, finding out people's true selves, it's you who's making your own decision in life, and through the obstacles you overcome you learn something new about yourself each time.
The main character of the book is Taylor Jessup who starts out as a twelve year old girl, and at the end of the book ends as a twenty seven year old woman. 

The book is about Taylor's journey through life and what she went through to get where she wanted to go. Although Taylor didn't know exactly where she wanted to go most of the time, (which supports the title The Way to Somewhere) she went through some interesting things that were learning experiences for her. From her mom being an alcoholic, her dad admitting he was gay and leaving the family, her older "cool" brother J.J., to whom she looked up to, her best high school friend Maria, and Joe, Taylor's carpentry boss, each played a significant part in who Taylor eventually grew up to be. Also from love, lust, and adventure helps Taylor find herself.
Taylor went through many jobs, apartments, schools, and boyfriends, throughout the book, and even dated her college teacher, Jeff, who she had her first house with. Taylor ends making a few moves around the country, leaving people and meeting new people, and finds out her passion is carpentry and that her favorite part of it is restoring old furniture.
Through moving, digging up old antique pieces from random trash cans, becoming pregnant, and coming close to a bad marriage, Taylor ends up in a place she'd always wanted to get away from; home in the state of Texas. Although, in the end, she's happy with where she's been, the decisions she's made, who she's had relationships with, and where she ends up. It's not about who people want you to be, it's about who you want to be. 

"You have to stay focused on yourself, because in the end, nobody else will."-Taylor. I chose this quote because it really is one of the big themes of the book.
I really enjoyed reading this book because it brought out emotion of my own life and how growing up can be exciting and scary at the same time. This book allows the reader to think and have their own opinion about real life situations and uses language that each a young person and an older person could relate to and it also had good flow. It was a definite page turner for me and I would recommend reading this book if you would be interested in a good story about a girl who transforms into womanhood through her corky and sometimes sad life challenges. I wouldn't have changed anything about the book, it had enough surprises to keep the reader interested but didn't go over the top. There was also nothing that I did not like about the book, because it mainly portrayed that decisions made by a strong women who are able to lead her own path in life, is something that not many people can do and it's something people should admire. I can't disagree with that. Thumbs up on this one.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

7 Spelling and Grammar Mistakes that Make You Look Dumb...

I really liked reading this article and I think a lot more people should read it. I feel like there are too many people out there who make stupid spelling and grammar mistakes, especially when it comes to trying to look professional. It is annoying seeing signs out front of some places that has a misspelled word, or that uses the wrong word in context. Just like the picture, shown in the article, of a board that says "we are committed to excellense." Wow, now that's embarrassing; they couldn't even spell the most important word right! It's like hello people, this is some second grade stuff! And people shouldn't be making these easy mistakes so often. It can make a person, business, or company look bad, just because of these simple spelling and grammar errors, and it can also be a deal breaker when it comes to getting hired. People are smarter than this, but maybe some of us need to go back to elementary school to get our minds refreshed of proper spelling and grammar so we stop looking dumb, because we really aren't! Don't let this happen to you, read this article!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Extra Credit: The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction

I really liked this article because I never knew how reading could really effect your brain in positive ways. For me, I was never big on reading, but after reading this article it intrigued me to read more so therefore I can more fully understand the complexities of my social life. In this article, it stated that reading can "produce a vivid simulation of reality" and "the opportunity to enter fully into other people's thoughts and feelings." Who knew that reading (even fiction) and engaging with characters in a book can help us relate to our real life. That is amazing to me. As stated in the article "individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective." Before reading this article I was already convinced that reading enhances a persons academic success and broadens their prior knowledge of many things, such as historical events and facts. But reading not only serves as entertaining purposes and teaches you things you never knew about before, it can also (as talked about in this article) produce more sensory details and feelings in your brain and aids you to learn more about yourself and about others that surround you in life to therefore better understand things going on in the world.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

PBS Culture Shock

On the PBS website, Victor and I were partners in deciding whether or not a violent video game image should be used on the homepage. It wasn't hard making certain decisions together, based on the image, because we actually had the same view points. It was almost instant for us to disagree with violence in video games and the exposure to children at a young age. Violence doesn't solely come from violent video games, but it can be influenced depending on the environment you live in and the age of the viewer. Our final decision was that we don't think that the video game image should be used on the websites homepage. Victor and I were part of the minority vote which was 7% compared to 92% who said that image should be used. With the question of video games being a form of art, we agreed because of the graphics and fantasy part of it, but not the violence part being considered as art. I personally found some of the other images on the website to be offensive, not necessarily the image chosen for the homepage, although I still didn't think it should be shown for a PBS website. During the exercise, none of the quotes swayed our decision because to us the quotes weren't very powerful in changing our thoughts or perspectives on it. Only except for the last quote that says, "what if it just shows the world as it actually is", because violence is a reality of life, even though we don't think about it all the time. We think that yes, video games are there to entertain but on the other hand, violent video games are not meant for young immature children. Kids get way too into video games, let alone violent ones are even more intense, and it seems they get more angry when they lose the game. Therefore it is not an outlet for aggression, and doesn't reduce murder and mayhem. Violent video games would most likely increase crime.