Blog 8: 2040

“Not yet.”

This is, more often than not, the first thing that pops into my mind every day. My cell phone goes off every morning the same way, with that incessant damn beep! I turn over and look at the time display on the phone’s front screen. September 12, 2040, 9:00 AM. With a mighty yawn, I order the phone to tell the coffee maker to start brewing. “Brewing,” it obediently replies.

“Phone”

“Ready for order,” responded the phone.

“Cereal,” I demand.

“Preparing”

Ah, you gotta’ love technology. I know I do. Just last year the school added the latest in food service tech, a machine that transports food from the campus’s dining hall right into my kitchen. Lovely. After getting dressed and walking to get my breakfast, it dawns on me. September 12^th, my research paper on the bilateral commission report on non-renewable resources is due in 20 minutes! Not to worry, I thought, I wrote it. Didn’t I? I think I did. I must have. No way would I have forgotten. Right, I think, I remember I did it before going out last Saturday. Yeah. No, wait, I played virtual Frisbee instead with some friends.

Oops.

I quickly run over to my cell phone once again and order it to enter computer mode. The phone quickly unfolds from its super slick phone mode to full fledged 18” laptop mode in ten seconds flat. Since I didn’t do my paper, I would have to hire someone to do so, specifically the most intelligent paper writing robot on the web at www.writemypaper.com. All I have to do is give him the instructions and he will return a paper to me in 10 minutes. Sure it costs $70, but that’s a small price to pay considering that without this paper, I will be paying a lot more to take the class over again next year. After printing out my brand new paper and swallowing my breakfast in under 60 seconds, I hop on my hover scooter to zip off to class to turn the paper in. After finishing that and the rest of my classes at 4 PM, it’s time for fun!

Dashing home as quick as my scooter will take me, I quickly demand my poor cell phone to please me yet again. Snapping into television mode, the phone quickly unfolds into yet another shape, specifically a 36” HD3D TV, the latest craze. Immediately turning the channel onto CNN, I watch a report on the recent war in Uganda. “Immersion mode,” I say aloud, which instantly warps me onto the battlefield. New cameras used today not only provide 3D technology but also take a full 360 degree view of the surrounding area, which viewers can easily be superimposed into at will. Awesome.

I watch TV until the signal gets fuzzy and goes dead. Odd, I think, this has never happened before. Suddenly, a tall man with thin eyes, a large forehead and a crescent shaped mouth appears on the screen. I hate sci-fi, so I quickly changed the channel only to be surprised that he is on every channel. I figure it must be some sort of major ad campaign for a new movie so I listen. It soon becomes apparent that I am wrong and that this is no future film; it appears that aliens from the Andromeda galaxy have taken control of our planet in order to save the earth from humankind. Interesting point, I think as I remember the recent stories about gas, coal, food, water, and energy shortages. I guess this had to come sometime. I put my phone back into plain old cell mode, set my alarm and decide to get some rest. I have a feeling I’m going to need it for tomorrow.

Blog 7: Pictures in Our Heads

Pictures in Our Heads, by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson is a very interesting article. It provides studies of the effects television has on society.

George Gerbner conducted a study about the effects of television on the way society perceives itself. Gerbner and his associates found that "the world portrayed on television is grossly misleading as a representation of reality," and "we take what we see on television as a reflection of reality." They also did studies on the beliefs and attitudes of "heavy" television viewers and "light" television viewers. For example, they found that the heavy viewers express more racially prejudiced attitudes. They also concluded that the heavy viewers are more pessimistic about the world, while the light viewers are more happy about life and optimistic.

Political psychologists Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder conducted experiments about evening news shows. They varied the contents of evening news shows watched by their research participants and came to the conclusion that whatever news story the participants were exposed to (because they were only exposed to one specific problem facing the United States) they felt more passionately for.

That evening news study helps to support Gerber's research by proving that society is indeed influenced by what they watch on television. It corrects by proving that it might not mean that people watching more television is a bigger influence, but by what exactly they watch.

Television is a great source of information about what is going on in the world, and a great form of entertainment, but it can also have its down-sides by being misleading or showing false "pictures" about the world today. We just have to be careful about what we watch and how we take in these "pictures in our heads" and perceive them.

Blog 5: Old Dogs

Old Dogs, a film by Disney, starring Robin Williams and John Travolta, is a movie that appeals to a middled aged audience. Robin Williams, Dan, and his best friend, played by John Travolta, Charlie, are put in charge of Dan's seven-year-old twins, whom he just recently found out about when his ex comes back in town after having been gone for seven years, while both are on the verge of the biggest business deal of their lives. They end up having trouble, of course, taking care of the children, be it they are new parents.

The trailer uses a lot of very funny clips and interesting audio clips from the soundtrack, like OK Go's song "Here It Goes Again," which plays during the Ultimate Frisbee clip, Dan's "little magic pills" clip, and the depth perception clip. They show Dan and right under his name says "is not great with kids," and shows him kicking a soccer ball at a kid and pegging him in the face. Then it shows Charlie, and right under his name it says "has other interests." This shows that you know they both are going to run into some trouble taking care of the kids and draws you in because you want to see what exactly happens.

My parents both told me they wanted to see this movie, and just happened to rent it and really enjoyed it. The trailer does a good job appealing to that audience because for one, the cast, and two, they did a good job picking out just the right clips. They were funny and entertaining.

From the well-known actors to the storyline that keeps you wanting more, this trailer appeals to an older audience because parents can relate to how these new parents are feeling trying to take care of children at their "advanced ages."

Here's the link to the movie trailer. (It wouldn't let me embed it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhY8AP806tU

Blog 4: Shutter Island

Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based off of Dennis Lehane's book, is about two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chuck Aule, played by Mark Ruffalo, whom are called to a remote island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate a mysterious disappearance of a murderous patient of the island's fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane. Just like the security officer of the island says,"We take only the most dangerous, damaged patients. Ones no other hospital can manage."

Now, this may sound like your typical investigation movie, but it is far from that. I was skeptical about seeing it at first, but I was quickly reassured not too far into the movie.

The movie takes place in Holocaust times, and now U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, and his new partner, Chuck Aule, are trying to figure out where a missing murderous "patient" has vanished to. The hospital's suspicious doctors, played by Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydo, are not much help. Turns out, the missing patient becomes beside the point as Teddy's increasingly unsteady state of mind takes center stage. Teddy reveals that the man who set the fire that killed his wife, Delores, is a patient at that hospital and is hell-bent on finding him too.

Teddy has a lot of flashbacks to the time he spent in WWII during the Dachau liberation as a U.S. Soldier, and depicts many disturbing images of dead bodies piled outside of boxcars and the killings of the S.S. Officers that he participated in. He also has many dreams, and daydreams, about his dead wife. One of the first dreams he has is from the very first night he spent at the hospital where, in his dream, he is holding his wife and she leaks water from her stomach and that turns to blood, then her whole body turns to ash. Delores plays a pretty large role in the movie as Teddy's sanity slowly goes down-hill and he begins to see more of her in his time on the island. She is a ghostly figure, usually in the background of Teddy's scenes, and she talks to him and he talks back. A "walking nightmare," if you must.

As the movie progresses, Teddy ends up finding some interesting, and possibly deadly, information about the institution and what exactly they do there. As Teddy talks to an inmate shackled in the forbidden Ward C, he finds out he just might be a mouse, trapped in a maze on the island, and there might not be a way out for him.

The second hour of the movie contains a marathon of explanations that wind up getting pretty confusing, I must say. But in the end, everything makes sense and that is what makes the movie so great. Even with the wicked, yet almost predictable, twist of an ending. The details of this movie are difficult to explain because so much goes on in the storyline. It is almost impossible to explain much of it without giving everything away. So, I apologize if everything is a little fuzzy.

Now, I do not want to give away the ending because I think this is a must see movie for all peoples 17 years of age and older, because it is rated R for disturbing violent content, language, and some nudity; although I do not recall anything of the latter. I absolutely loved this movie and simply cannot wait to own it.

Less Privacy Is Good for Us (and You)

The article,"Less Privacy Is Good for Us (and You)," by Amitai Etzioni shows reader the complexity of privacy issues by giving multiple examples of the ways our privacy rights are violated. In my opinion, the most complex of the privacy issues given by Etzioni was the one about a mother's rights about being a carrier of HIV and passing it on to her baby by birth. The story is, mothers who have HIV may be able to avoid passing it to their children simply by not breast-feeding them and by giving the child AZT. In order for this to happen though, the mother must know she is infected with HIV, so she has to get some tests done. The problem with that is, some civil libertarians and gay activists "oppose such disclosure on the grounds that when infants are tested for HIV, in effect one finds out if the mother is a carrier, and thus her privacy is violated." To me, this is a load of crap. Seems to me all they are trying to do is protect the baby.

Also brought up, that I thought was interesting, was biometrics. Which would prohibit people who are trying to escape their past from creating a whole new identity. (Biometrics is like a camera that recognizes faces or fingerprint scanners.)

Another complexity would be the reason to violate someone's personal privacy because of danger to the individual or to the people around them. Like, someone committing a crime. The whole "search" the individual for weapons thing.

Immokalee Videos

Immokalee is very different than where I grew up in Saint Petersburg and Pinellas Park. Immokalee is very underdeveloped. Where I grew up, it is very rural and is just full of houses and stores and malls and such. It is a very developed community and is still growing today. They are pretty much just opposite types of countys.

The communities represented in the videos are the Native Americans, the old farmers and "cowboys," and just a tad of the Hispanic community. I wish the Native Americans had a bigger role in the videos because they are a huge reason why Florida and Immokalee are here today.

Immokalee is a representative of the Old American Dream but can be considered the new dream too if you look at it from different perspectives. It is a representation of the old dream because of the historical background you are given in the videos, like building your own house and having a successful ranch and ranching business. But if you look at it from the new dream perspective, Immokalee is an area that can open up the door for a lot of new-comers to the area to make their own American Dream happen.

The industries and communities that will drive Immokalee's future will probably be the casino and agriculture and the Immokalee Indians. The casino will continue to bring in a lot of money for the area and so will the crops and with both of those doing very well, the area will continue to develop and bring more tourists in and job opportunities.

In ten years' time, Immokalee will become very developed and become a lot like Fort Myers and the surrounding areas. It will hopefully keep some historic parts around for tourism and for the sake of keeping Florida's history alive. Immokalee's future looks grand and is definitely going to be doing well for itself.

First Entry Assignment: A Quilt of a Country: Out of Many, One?

In the article,"A Quilt of a Country: Out of Many, One," by Anna Quindlen, Quindlen explains how the United States, although diverse in cultures and nationalities, comes together as one population when tragedy strikes the country. Although the United States is very different in that sense, we all manage to come together in times of need to comfort one another over the same topic; America is our home. She discusses the hatred of nationalities like the Irish versus the Italians, and yet, she herself is a combination of the two. This is a good example that shows how well different people can come together and live as one. Quindlen writes,"Pride seems excessive...But patriotism is partly taking pride in this unlikely ability to throw all of us together in a country...as different as a dozen countries, and still be able to call it by one name." These few lines sum up the main idea of her article. America is like an old quilt made out of different bit and pieces of other quilts, yet come together to make one beautiful and cozy blanket.

I agree with the author and what she wrote about the United States. Although it is a very diverse country made up of "ever-changing disparate parts," it is what makes the United States so strong in times of crisis. This article was written in response to the September 11 attacks. Quindlen writes,"Terrorism has led to devastation-and unity." This is very true. There is no other time one will see diverse people come together than in a time of tragedy. The September 11 attacks made people become more patriotic and helpful towards one another. Like Quindlen wrote,"...a mongrel nation that somehow, at times like this, has one spirit."