My Time and Place Around the Cows

In this article, My Time and Place Around Cows, the author discusses how raising cows in his life has affected how he views his place in the world and how it all works and falls into place. Dave Stewart, the author,  starts off by discussing the “alchemical” process that cows take to create milk. After that Stewart, talks about how him and his cows have a harmonious relationship. The cows give Stewart milk while he keeps the pastures free from their “natural enemies, trees.” Stewart later discuss how the cows have made him respect were the products that are on the shelves at the grocery store come from.

I agree with the messages in the article. These messages are; the power of growing your own food, animals improving your life, and the connection that animals give you to your ancestors.   

Stewart is showing the power of raising, or growing, your own food. My family has our own garden in our backyard and when you work on the garden you get a feeling of satisfaction that is hard to top. When it finally comes time to pick the tomatoes, peppers, and basil you feel satisfied that you were able to grow your own food and have a skill that could save your life one day.

I also agree with his message that raising animals will improve your life and give you more of an understanding of our world and how it affects us in modern day. Stewart gives a good example of this in this quote, “After dinner, my kids undo time by making ice cream soup out of the laboriously frozen product that had been my goal minutes before.”

I feel that by raising animals it gives us a connections to our ancestors. “Morning and night, I, like my grandfather the dairy farmer before me, confirm Orion’s progress through New Hampshire’s dark winter skies.” This backs of my statement because it shows Stewart's connection to his grandfather. Stewarts is show that he thinks of himself as a similar person to his grandfather because of his connection to the farm and the cows.

In conclusion I think that the article, My Time and Place Around Around Cows, shows how live raising livestock, or plants, can connect you to the area around you and to your ancestors. Farming connects you to the world around you. As you, the farmer, dictates what crops grow and observes as they reach maturity. The crops being harvested and finally getting a grasp of what happens to get the food to your table.

The Fringe Internet and How It Connects To Mental Illness

4chan article link

In this article from The Washington Post, by Caitlin Dewey, she opens by describing the connection between the internet fringe culture of 4chan and similar sites. Dewey specifically cites 4chan’s connection with the recent shooting on the Oregon College Campus. Fring culture web sites are message boards notorious for their political incorrectness, hate, and memes. The main theme of the article is how the internet can be an outlet for people with severe mental illness. Dewey discusses a message board on the website Redit, “Many of FA’s members, the group’s moderator believes, suffer from severe depression; he can recall three forum members who have attempted suicide.” Dewey goes on to talk about “forever alone” boards where lonely people post personal ads. The ad are almost never answered, or work out to successful relationships. This starts a cycle of depression, because these people feel even more alone than before. Then the participants are driven to suicide.

I believe that the article is correct when it states that what people say on the internet anonymously can be a look into what is going on in their head. In the article, Dewey, states that there was a post on the /b/ form of 4chan (/b/ is a message board found on 4chan know for its dark posts).
The author of the aforementioned post threatened to kill people. The /b/ moderators are trying to track down the author. They are suspicions that the author was John Hailin, the Oregon Community College shooter. Perhaps the shooting could have been prevented had we been able to identify the IP address of the author.

After reading Dewey’s discussion regarding the mysterious post tied to the Oregon shooting, I question the responsibility of the moderators.  Everyone on the internet has an IP address identifying their server. I think that the moderators should be able to contact the police and give the IP address if a post is something that could endanger people's lives. The dilemma is that this could be a violation of the posters freedom of speech.

Dewey goes on to discuss “forever alone” boards. ”Forever alone” boards are sites where people with disability and mental illness chat. Dewey explains that because people with mental illness are drawn to the site, they offer little support to each other. The participants have a negative effect on each other. In the end these boards make already depressed people even more depressed. I agree with Dewey's conclusion that these sites are not beneficial.

In conclusion, I think that message boards such as 4chan, Reddit, and others are not the best place for people to use as an outlet. They tend to harbor people with depression and even mental illnesses.

Creative Obsessive (Ted PLN)

Ted talk

This video is done by one of my personal heros, Adam Savage. In the video he discusses his obsession with items and the stories they tell.

He starts off with the story if the Dodo Skeleton. A Dodo is a bird that what extinct in the 1800's. He was having a craft day with his kids and decided to sculpt a Dodo skull out of Skulpie. Next he did some vertebrae and ended up with a complete skeleton.

After that he talked about the Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon, which is a bird from a movie of the same name and it has an interesting history, the prop was sold at an auction house to a local department store. Then was stolen around the time a remake for the movie was coming out. Later it showed up again on the market and was sold to a bar and and a couple years later it was stolen from the bar.

First, I really connected to this talk because I am what is called a maker. A maker is someone who loves to make things of any nature. I like to build models of airplanes and combat vehicles. But I also like to collect things from TV shows or movies that I like. For instance I really like the movie Alien, so a have a model of the space suit that Kane wore in the movie. Another example is I have a wand from Harry Potter that is one of my favorite things in my “collection.”  I enjoy collecting is because of the stories and connection that these object that I have to the movies, time periods, and authors to these characters or creative people that I look up to. Another instance of this is the project I am planning to start soon. I am going to build a model of the Millennium Falcon and hope to give is a paint job to mimic a World War 2 fighter plane.

Another reason, I think that Adam Savage is  one of my heros is because of his accomplishments. He was a model builder for Industrial Light and Magic, this is the shop that did such films as Alien, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and, Starship Troopers
(a favorite of mine). This would be my dream job to work at this studio.

In conclusion I really connected to this video. When Adam was talking I felt like that would be what I would say in that situation. Mine would be over different projects of course, but I really connected to what he was saying.

A Modern Classroom 2.0 (Re Wright)

In the video, a modern classroom, by Michael Wesch it discusses how a classroom doesn't fit what is needs to be in a modern day context. It talks about how colleges are wasting the money of the student on textbooks they never use. How in class students are never using their computers for work because there is no work that is actually needing to be done on computers, because the professors don’t know how to do something like that on a computer. There is the information on the board but it is not intriguing it is just simple writing. It is missing videos, pictures, audio, and many other thing that they could be doing with a device such as a smart board.

I do not think that technology is not being used to its full potential. I really think that it is. I came from a school where the last time they got a new textbook was in the early 90’s. They had little netbooks from 2008 but they could hardly work on the internet today, and they had so small screens and keys that they were virtually worthless to use as a tool. They did not have flash player on them so you could not run a video or any type of media. They did not have enough memory for word so we had to have computer like the one I have included a picture of. When I came to Powell in 8th grade last year I was shocked by the uses of the technology, the fact that there was a smartboard in every room that the teachers actually used. We watched videos from the internet not ones that were just on a VCR from 20 years ago. It opened my mind up to new possibilities. I was no longer the smartest kid in the class because I read when I was young and had a deep fascination in science. There were new people, different types of people that I could  meet not just two groups the Jocks and the Nerds. Now there were geeks (yes it's different than nerds), emos, band kids, skaters, soccer player, cross country people, football/lacrosse players. I know this is off topic but it is a part of this steam from technology in the classrooms. It is what makes a modern school what it is, technology, and the people. So I think that classrooms are not struggling to catch up with the modern needs for an education, I think that they are embracing those needs and using them to their best abilities.(Re Wright

Bigfoot PLN

Link To Article Number 1

Link To Article Number 2

Link To PGF

As a lone shape meandered across the screen you start to wonder what is that? Then you think, maybe it's Bigfoot? Or is it? This is reviewed in a paper that was written by Dr. Jeff Meldrum, and Bill Munns on the topic of the Patterson Gimlin film taken in Bluff Creek California. The aforementioned film is one of the most famous films of Bigfoot. Is it really what people say it is? To start of the paper reviews the technical side of the 8 millimeter film to describe and show that there are no signs of tampering to the film. This is basically the entire paper as a whole. The paper goes over the technical side of the PGF (Patterson Gimlin Film), because of this I decided to pull in another paper. This was more of a breakdown of the circumstantial evidence around the event.  Like the cast process that Patterson took.

First off, I personally think that the PGF is a hoax. I know from my personal knowledge that there was a lot of things that happened the day of the filming that discredit the validity of the video. Earlier that day, Patterson went and took a walk without Gimlin toward a road that they had used to get into the area. I think that while he was gone he was in contact with another person. He told where to go and gave him the suit and told him to weight by the creek shown in the video. There was a background with Patterson building things. When he was younger he did build alot of tiny stage coaches (yah I know that sounds crazy) and he sold them to people. I do not feel that him alone made the suit but he was a part of it.

Next I will talk about the article on the state of the film. I first have to point out that the two authors are very outspoken about how 100% sure they are of the existence of Bigfoot. Dr. Meldrum is a doctor in the field of biology. He is a self proclaimed “expert” in the pseudo science of  cryptozoology, the study of mythical animals such as Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster. Bill Munns is a costume designer for Universal Studios. I thought that Dr. Meldrum did not deserve to have his name on the project. What he contributed was virtually nothing but name recognition. This leads me to believe that the paper should have just been Bill Munns paper.

A Modern Classroom

The video was very true, I agreed with the point that they made. Class are a 20th century environment with 21st century technology. This is a problem, because this is not preparing us for the world that we will be living in when we graduate from high school. I thought that the way that they presented the information was interesting. I liked how also that talk about what is missing from just a simple black board that could be replaced simply by a smart board or a project with a smart touch projection board. I like the movement of the camera it was engaging and definitely helped with the presentations of the information. But I feel to that a technical critique they could have used more wide angle shots for more of a dramatic telling, or a long shot from the end showing the entire class to have more of an impact.

I think that the intent and meaning behind the video is that we need to modernise the classroom. But there is no easy way to do that. We would need to train teachers to use this new technology and allow them to understand how this can help in the class room. I feel that it is being implemented at high levels such as high schools and some collages, but not in middle schools or elementary schools. I think that overall the video was good, and effective at getting its point across technically not the best but still good.

Bully

Bully was a movie about that of its namesake, Bully.  The movie opens with the story of a boy who killed himself because of bullying and the impact that has had on his family. It talks about his family's fight to end bullying and their campaign to end it. Next it move to a boy, Tyler, who the movie focuses on a lot later. He lives in a small town and has problems with the aforementioned subject. He get picked on on a daily basis, and honestly has no friends in his school. After that, we move to a girl of about nine or ten who is just about to get out of prison and released back into the custody of her mother. She, a couple years prior,m had brought a gun on to a school bus t try to scare some kids that were bothering her. After that it goes back to Tyler and shows a disturbing scene where he is picked on on the buss by some kids. Second to last they talk to a kid whose best friend killed himself. Finally, it comes back to a group of people who are hold a kind of pep rally to help support family who have lost a loved one.

I thought that Bully was a decent movie that deserved all the attention that it got. I was able to connect with a lot of the stories. But first off I did observe that none of the kids in this movie lived in an urban setting where there were not a lot of people. I think that this is the problem that there is not a wide variety of people living in these arias so it makes that there is not as much variety so anyone just a little out of the norm will be picked on it’s inevitable. But I also have to say that a lot of these kids could have handed this a lot better. I honestly think Kelbie handled it the best out of all of them. But some of the kids I felt were just not doing the best they could to stop it.

I was able to relate to a lot of the stories, I used to live in a small town, baily, until a year ago when I moved down here in to Litton. But in 6th grade I had real issues. I had switched school districts that year so I was very new to the school. There was this one time that a kid smashed my face into a desk. Another my trumpet was thrown around the buss by someone who I had previously thought to be my friend. It was not a good year. But in 7th grade I started to draw less attention to myself and honestly learn the bearer of what would get me left alone. This may sound bad like I abandoned who I was I did not I just stopped screaming it.

In conclusion I was able to relate to Bully heavily and over all I thought it was good. The movie got its message across got its message across very well. It could have been more factual but over all it did what it was meant to.