Sex sells. As sad a fact as that it is, you cannot deny the truth. Why else would you have the perky blonde selling Orbit gum? Or the bikini-clad girl perched on a souped-up car? The media tells women to think of themselves as objects, to push themselves to reach a level of perfection that may well kill them. Why doesn’t the media focus more on what women can do, instead of where they aren’t?
“Someone I Once Knew” by Dead Celebrity Status
The feminist media has heightened our awareness as a public to how much women are capable of in the journalistic world. Some feel they should stop driving home their point, but I agree with the author of the second article. What would we do without them to remind us to look back at how far we’ve come? Without the likes of Barbara Walters or Connie Chung, we’d still be looking at the grizzled visage of Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! They were both fabulous.)
As I haven’t lived through the ‘burning of the bras’ or ‘broken the glass ceiling’, never mind finished a year of college yet, I realize my position on this topic is coming from an odd angle. I will never know how hard it was for those first women to break into the newsroom, but I am thankful they’ve made my journey easier.
23 February 2009
16 February 2009
Knowledge is Power
"Those who control knowledge have the power to define reality"- Harold Innis
That line just about struck me speechless. It's a beautiful phrase.
Moving on, Innis also 'sees of a dialectical relationship between society and technology'. (directly lifted from the first article) In today's world, this is evident by people using video chat to perform university interviews.
He also writes of what he calls a 'time-based medium'. Using the example of a carved stone or the pyramids of Giza, he elaborates that they are not called such because of their weight, but because they have withstood the test of time & weathered the elements to survive to present day. I feel this is much like the Internet now - we can shut down a website, delete history and cookies from a computer, but it is never really gone. We can tape television programmes or newscast, but if we lack the devices to play them back in the future, what good will they do?
To turn to the second article which states that teens are texting more than they are speaking, let me relate this is the sad truth from nothing less than personal experience: My father's house is large. All of us children have bedrooms upstairs, with the kitchen & main television being below. To call us all to supper, he will send a text to the wayward girl who has her head buried in a textbook or music pounding through her ears. He is guaranteed a response more by that method that if he had stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted. I find it sad and a but pathetic we are reduced to communication through an electronic device that plugs into the wall rather than a face-to-face conversation. I would prefer he yell to attract attention, but I understand at least one wouldn't hear it. (and I realise one other may become hostile and demand to know why he was shouting.) I suppose this is just a way that we have adapted technology's form of communication to fit our needs.
photo (c) Alfred Molon
That line just about struck me speechless. It's a beautiful phrase.
Moving on, Innis also 'sees of a dialectical relationship between society and technology'. (directly lifted from the first article) In today's world, this is evident by people using video chat to perform university interviews.
He also writes of what he calls a 'time-based medium'. Using the example of a carved stone or the pyramids of Giza, he elaborates that they are not called such because of their weight, but because they have withstood the test of time & weathered the elements to survive to present day. I feel this is much like the Internet now - we can shut down a website, delete history and cookies from a computer, but it is never really gone. We can tape television programmes or newscast, but if we lack the devices to play them back in the future, what good will they do?
To turn to the second article which states that teens are texting more than they are speaking, let me relate this is the sad truth from nothing less than personal experience: My father's house is large. All of us children have bedrooms upstairs, with the kitchen & main television being below. To call us all to supper, he will send a text to the wayward girl who has her head buried in a textbook or music pounding through her ears. He is guaranteed a response more by that method that if he had stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted. I find it sad and a but pathetic we are reduced to communication through an electronic device that plugs into the wall rather than a face-to-face conversation. I would prefer he yell to attract attention, but I understand at least one wouldn't hear it. (and I realise one other may become hostile and demand to know why he was shouting.) I suppose this is just a way that we have adapted technology's form of communication to fit our needs.
photo (c) Alfred Molon
09 February 2009
Video Games
Video games are often violent, inciting a decades-old debate as to if the gamer is more likely to develop violent behavior as a result or not. I believe it may contribute to people’s likelihood of violence, but is not solely responsible. Is it not a certain type of person who gains pleasure in animated strippers or running people over?
Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who has reviewed thousands of documents about the Columbine shootings, published his theory in the American Journal of Psychiatry that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred after their parents took away their video game privileges. He wrote, as published by The Denver Post that it was clear they became more violent after being forced to quit cold-turkey from their computer or video games as punishment. If that is the reaction from playing Doom, what would the reaction be from a game like Grand Theft Auto in which you steal cars, run amok in an world with no rules and participate in “date missions” in order to bed the girlfriend?
While our second article reports that the results of a longitudinal study say that playing a video game is not a predictor of aggressive behavior, the study does have its’ flaws. Mainly, the video game in question dealt with a fantasy story line; that is not enough evidence to convince me that the same results apply to a first-person shooter game set in a world much like ours.
picture from Google image search; gaygamer.net
Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who has reviewed thousands of documents about the Columbine shootings, published his theory in the American Journal of Psychiatry that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred after their parents took away their video game privileges. He wrote, as published by The Denver Post that it was clear they became more violent after being forced to quit cold-turkey from their computer or video games as punishment. If that is the reaction from playing Doom, what would the reaction be from a game like Grand Theft Auto in which you steal cars, run amok in an world with no rules and participate in “date missions” in order to bed the girlfriend?
While our second article reports that the results of a longitudinal study say that playing a video game is not a predictor of aggressive behavior, the study does have its’ flaws. Mainly, the video game in question dealt with a fantasy story line; that is not enough evidence to convince me that the same results apply to a first-person shooter game set in a world much like ours.
picture from Google image search; gaygamer.net
02 February 2009
Semiotics & the I-Ching
Semiotics is the study of signs. It is hard to define, as a sign can be either a living organism or not. Most of us today would see semiotics as a study of the most primitive form of communication. People communicated in signs before talking was an option – it is something we still do today. How else would we know what to do at an intersection but for the red octagon? That is a prime example of a non-living organism being a sign.
The second article, written by Eugene Gormy, says that “perhaps the most widespread, canonical definition of semiotics is the definition by subject: “Semiotics is the science of signs and/or sign systems”.” He continues on to prove that “something which is usually perceived as a sign, can in some occasions be perceived (and used) as a simple thing. For example, one can read and interpret the Bible, considering it a sacred and symbolic object but one can also to kill somebody using the Bible to hit him on the head. Sometimes people give things special meanings, transforming them into signs which can be quite insignificant to other people.” I think an example of this would be the I-Ching. While it exists physically as an ancient (and classic) Chinese text, it is also seen as a system of foretelling the future.
picture of I-Ching coins found through Google at dragon-gate.com
The second article, written by Eugene Gormy, says that “perhaps the most widespread, canonical definition of semiotics is the definition by subject: “Semiotics is the science of signs and/or sign systems”.” He continues on to prove that “something which is usually perceived as a sign, can in some occasions be perceived (and used) as a simple thing. For example, one can read and interpret the Bible, considering it a sacred and symbolic object but one can also to kill somebody using the Bible to hit him on the head. Sometimes people give things special meanings, transforming them into signs which can be quite insignificant to other people.” I think an example of this would be the I-Ching. While it exists physically as an ancient (and classic) Chinese text, it is also seen as a system of foretelling the future.
picture of I-Ching coins found through Google at dragon-gate.com
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