Ch 5 Reading

So, first off, I didn't really find the whole "iceberg" model to be very helpful. You are basically just looking deeper at the article you are using in order to possibly find a more scientific sources. It is better to use more scientific resources because their facts hold more validity and can be considered true. Developing search terms will help me narrow down the articles that are coming in through my search. The information given about evaluating sources will be useful in determining the validity of the site I am using. I do not want to use some crappy blog or just a random person's opinion; I want to use the most verified sources I can to back up my argument. The better the sources I use, the better the persuasion of my point. I am not sure that field research will be a very good choice for the paper because it is all opinions and most of the people near me are the same ethnicity and around the same age. Perhaps interviews and anthropology professor or someone who studies evolution would be of assistance, but I doubt I will really use field research. The whole dialogue thing seems kind of dumb to be honest. I guess it could help, but it's not something I see myself putting time and effort into.

Ch. 4 Text

The text in Chapter 4 provides excellent strategies for researching a topic. I feel like the planning and researching ideas will help a lot with our next paper. I found one of the pictures to be kind of funny, Figure 4.11 on page 81. I have never seen this image, but I thought it was rather comical. It basically says that this man gave up his body so we can have big, gas-sucking vehicles. I know in real life it is not funny but that was my first impression of it. As with the last paper, the hypothesis/thesis will probably be the most difficult. It is hard to sum up an entire paper with one sentence. Generating research questions will take some creativity but I sure it will be very beneficial to our next assignment considering we are using multiple sources and possibly images. The free-writing/ 3 paragraph system is also useful when preparing for a large essay. All these tools with be beneficial to the construction of my next assignment.

Avatars

In the gaming world avatars are extremely popular. Gamers use these figures to represent things about themselves. Some people make avatars completely opposite their true selves and others make ones similar to themselves. Gamers use avatars to let out their personality and feelings without being judged by true appearances. In some cases, this has been very helpful. For example the first guy on page 323 is handicapped, but the gamers he plays with online have no knowledge of this. Using the avatar has allowed him to make many friends online that he couldn't make in the real world because of his disabilities. Sometimes gamers make avatars that make them more powerful, like the girl on page 324. If she had a female avatar the male gamers would be hitting on her and not taker her seriously, so she created and strong black male figure to represent herself. Avatars are a great way of self expression and allow people to get to know one another based on personality rather than appearance. In the classroom I think avatars could be useful. Students could make their own individual and come up with a creative name that makes each person anonymous. Using the avatars would allow more shy students to express their thoughts on subjects at hand without feeling ashamed. Because the true identities of each student would be unknown, fellow students would not be able to make fun of the student who spoke up in the aftermath. In general, avatars can be very useful.

MySpace or Facebook Article

Boyd's article could be considered somewhat offensive to others. For me personally, I've had both. Now, I only use facebook. I do agree that I enjoy the minimalism of facebook and the "individualism" of Myspace was rather annoying. I got fed up with choosing backgrounds, songs, etc on myspace. And for me, it seems easier to find people on facebook. I thought it was quite strange how Boyd brought in the whole race and class thing. I never really saw that, especially not on facebook. I suppose I can see the relationship with myspace though. Certain songs and designs are geared toward a specific group of people. However, facebook doesn't supply those. I agree that using the backgrounds and such on myspace is a way of expressing yourself, but you can also express yourself on facebook with status updates, personal information, writing notes, posting videos and pictures, and more. I haven't been on Myspace in several years, so I don't know what it looks like these days. MySpace seems like more of a thing of the past and the "cool" thing is to have facebook. I feel like Facebook has more privacy and is easier to use. I can easily find friends from high school and college and get in touch with them just by typing in their name. But, like I said before, I don't really see the connection with race and class very much.

Writing Assignment 1

Soooo, this paper we are writing based on a picture. It's kind of tough. I am going to brutally honest with you on this one. My topic is about illegal immigrants in Arizona. In my writing I chose to oppose the law established by the Governor and persuade people to stand against it. HOWEVER, in all honesty.......I truly agree with the law. I know I am probably not supposed to do this, but I am persuading in the opposite direction of how I really feel. Truth is, I would really like to see more done against illegal immigrants because they simply do not have the right to be here. Anyways, writing this paper has been a little tough, but persuading in the direction I did made it somewhat easier because it gave a better argument for the picture I chose. The length of the paper is a bit much. I am used to the typical 5 paragraph essay which is usually all a teacher will ask of me.  Spreading it out into more than 5 paragraphs is a challenge mostly because many of the topics kind of run together and are hard to separate. Another difficulty I found with this paper is not using many outside sources. I like to use more facts and figures to prove points which is what we would call logos. Only basing the paper off the picture is hard because I would like to draw more info from outside sources than just the pic itself, so focusing on the cartoon was difficult. I can tell that this paper really made me actually think a lot and be more creative with my writing because typically I am a follower and base ideas off of others and this paper required more leading on my part to be creative. I believe you can get the gist of what I'm saying here.

Orbach Article

I support Orbach's notion to give girls and women a better self-image; however, this could present the argument that consumerism and fast-fast have created a fat population. Though this seems rather unrelated I still think there is a connection. Orbach brings it a lot of pathos in her article, using the phrases that speak to the emotions. Some instances of this in her writing are the testimonies and trying to make the audience relate to the issue by using "their wives, mothers, lovers, sisters, and daughters." I found a mix between emotional and logical reasoning in the part where she talks about the girl in Fiji; she gives statistical and mathematical evidence and the feeling of guilt about the adolescent girls' behavior. She also makes a few generalizations like this one, "Women have had enough of not finding themselves in the ads they look at." I support Orbach's efforts to create realistic body images for girls and women because in general, it's a good thing to do. I can see myself in the people she's talking about because I, too, have trouble with body image after seeing the skinny twigs in magazines and on television. I hope the ads will lead to an evolution of the meaning of beauty.

Sept 2nd HW

Pogue: Pogue's column about photo sharing comes in handy for those of us that enjoy posting photos and making photo albums online. However, I found this reading not useful for me because I do not use any of these sites and hardly ever even add photos to my Facebook page. I am just not big on taking pictures.

Skenazy: I agree with Skenazy's column in that our pictures today do not reflect real life. Photos taken today now need a message or voice and represent "the perfect family." I think it would be interesting if more people took photos of the "unperfect" moments in day-to-day life, like a child yelling about juice or timeouts. These would show what real life is really about

Williams: I found Williams' article to be a nice change from the typical modern picture taking articles. His review of the history of snapshots was interesting. It is hard to think of photographers as part chemist, magician, and artist in today's society because technological advances have allowed a huge variety of people to be photographers, from the ordinary person to the famous photographers. His view back into the old days let's us see how far we have come over the years.

Reflecting on "Representing Reality"

      I found the reading from this chapter to be very interesting. To begin with, the author presents two photos taken in times of crisis (earthquake in Haiti). The first one shows a woman holding her rosary with a crumbling church behind her. The book gives examples of what the photo could mean but I thought of one myself. To me, it is a sign of hope, that although the woman must recover from the tragedy, she still finds hope in her faith.
       Something I was thinking about while reading about how photos can represent reality and such was that photos sometimes only show one side of a situation. Take for example photos after hurricane Katrina. People all over saw photos of survivors waiting on top of buildings for rescue, what they did not show, however, were the thousands of people, even still today, they came to the rescue in hundreds of different ways.
   I also found the part discussing the perfect family to be interesting, and it gave me something new to consider. Imagine if all our Facebook pictures consisted of candid moments like the moment we get out of bed, or the look on a girls face when there is a roach in her bedroom. It seems today that people don't want to show their real selves. I am no exception. If you were to look at my Facebook profile picture right now you would find me standing next to my brother in my basketball uniform. Of course my mom wanted to get this pic and that's why we're standing so close and smiling really big. Usually my brother and I don't get along too well and I also don't even play basketball any more. In fact, that picture was taken about 3 years ago and doesn't represent what is really going on in my life today.