ME

Finals

As my final week draws to an end, I thought I’d take some time out to reflect on finals week and what it means to me.

 Finals week has several meanings for me. The first is its usually a last chance to either drastically improve my grade in a class, or often times a chance for me to just blow my grade. The finals is crunch time, I actually tend to enjoy the chance because I can often cram a semester of learning into my head in a relatively short amount of time.

Finals week also is part of what I don’t like about school, that is the valuing of one test or paper. In my mind its hard to really get something from a class when so much time and effort is put into one project or just one paper. Their ends up being too much emphasis on it and I feel it detracts from the learning that can take place. I think that a series of smaller projects throughout the year, with a final project that doesn’t have a too much more significance than any other project would be more beneficial. 

Most memorable quotes of 2007

found this in an article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071219/us_nm/usa_quotes_dc 

 ”Don’t Tase Me, Bro,”

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.”

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

“That’s some nappy-headed hos there,”

“There’s only three things he (Republican presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.” — Sen. Joseph Biden, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate.

“(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom.”

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Mitchell Report

I find it very interesting what has come from this report. It’s interesting how much different steroid implication is compared to our actual legal system. In today’s sports world, you’re almost guilty until proven innocent. I think that there are going to be so many people that have their reputation tarnished because of this that shouldn’t. It’s also interesting to see the differences between two different players, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Both now have similar allegations with no failed drug tests to convict them, yet BB is scrutinized right now much more than Clemens is. It will be interesting to see if that all changes over time.

Final Project

Although I’ve only filmed what Im going to use in my final project, I’m excited for its finish. I think that I was able to observe a few things that I don’t normally see when I make my weekly journey to the grocery store, especially because I’m going by car. You see more than you thought was there when you go by foot as time passes a little slower and images don’t just rush by. You notice the subtle differences by going by foot. You don’t realize how hilly a path is unti you’ve actually walked it. You’re actualy view of things changes when you’re walking up a hill as compared to when you’re driving. It’s very interesting what you see when you take the time to pick apart the everydayness of the journey.

Elections

This image of Chuck Norris and Mike Huckabee got me thinking about the elections. I started talking to one of my housemates about it, and we were amazed by how easily people could be influenced by popular figures in entertainment if they backed a candidate. The story from which the photo came from talks about how after Chuck Norris backed Mike Huckabee, google searches went up 10% for Huckabee, but went up an astounding 475% for “Mike Huckabee Chuck Norris”. Its sad to think that people might be so influenced by entertainers, some of which I’m sure have little clue about politics. Just imagine if Oprah endorsed someone. The elections would be OVER.

Weathermap observations

For two weeks we had to collect information pertaining to the opposite words, happy and sad. We were to collect any and everything that had to do with them in the US. I mostly collected news articles, blogs, images along with some videos and some blogs from WeFeelFine. Through the collecting and organizing of the information in Flash, I came across several observations in both my weathermap and that of the other group members.

I found through collecting my data that there seemed to be alot more data surrounding happy rather than sad. This was something that I observed in only my weathermap and not my other group members. I’m not sure if this had anything to do with the method in which I was collecting data or what it was. I think had to do with more of people can put “happy” in front of many words and create something with it. “Sad” just didn’t seem to pop up all that often in the news as much for me, more so in blogs I saw it. This is the opposite of what I thought it would be because usually I think of “bad” and “sad” things as being more newsworthy than “happy” and “good” things.

I also observed in general the amount of blgos that exist. I had a much easier time finding data from blog entries than from the news. People seem to more than ever be putting their thoughts and feelings out in the public’s eye than ever before. I think its an interesting idea, because sometimes I think this ability allows people to say things that they normally wouldn’t say in face to face conversations, and that sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it isn’t. I think some people will create feelings just to get a reaction or rise out of those that are reading their thoughts, while others are being honest in ways they would not have been if it wasn’t for the use of the blog as an outlet of their feelings.

In observing other peoples weathermaps, i noticed the opposite in the composition of happy to sad events. The other group members seemed to have a lot more sad events in their weathermap than happy events. Alot of their data revolved around death and tragedy. We felt that this had to do with the notin that sadness and despair sells. We felt that people like to read about those kind of topics and compare it to their own lives so that they feel more secure about themselves. They can look at the events and feel that “at least that didn’t happen to me.”

Another observation from the other group members weathermaps is that when happy was being used in the data, often times it seemed very superficial. People would just throw the word around, like this is happy and that is happy and I’m so happy. It never really seemed genuine, where as when people used the word sad, it seemed true. When people sad they were sad or this event was sad, it was  believable. It didn’t seem like they were covering up some other feeling, if it was sad it seemed to have a true feeling to it.