Areopagitica for All!

I realize that probably no one will recognize the title, Areopagitica by John Milton. It was an attempt by John for free speech in 1644 against British parliament. John Milton believed in a world of free speech without censorship as well as the belief in the marketplace of ideas. John saw that everyone should get to voice their opinions, knowledge, information, etc. in the form they please. What he believed in stronger than that was that it is the consumer's job to determine from the marketplace of ideas what items in the market were rotten and which were ripe for the picking. I agree with John one hundred and ten percent! The publisher has done their job of supplying the content, and now it is the consumer's job to analyze whether or not that content is worthy of serious consideration or just poppycock. I think that the Internet has seriously de-railed people's will to actually filter the information they are being given. Just like the State Farm commercial says, “You can’t always believe what’s on the Internet.” I believe this has also become a major factor in people’s decisions on voting for public office representatives. I seriously think our nation needs a swift kick in the ass to stop just going with the flow and start really evaluating our decisions. 

McDonald's Makes Hamburgers?

I knew that the food industry was just that, industrialized. I did not know to what extent that it had become now, but the Food Inc. video shed a very bright light on a very dark area. I realize that there are quotas to meet and orders to fill, but to what extent can we allow things to go? I believe that this "line" of moral and ethical boundaries has already been crossed. The farmer in the documentary who is sticking it to the corporations that are running with these practices is exactly right when he says that the people making the decisions thousands of miles away can cut a certain cost and move something somewhere else because they do not live with the consequences that in some cases can be dire. I was baffled at the statistic that showed people only spend a minuscule amount of their income on food with other expenditures that are nowhere near necessities trumping such a vital part of life. The worst part about the documentary in my opinion was the inhumane acts from large chicken suppliers to the chickens. I think it is completely wrong to basically turn a regular chicken into what looked like an Easter marshmallow peep candy when you put it in the microwave. The science behind this should not be going toward things like bigger chickens faster, but to re-allocate that money to be able to have human chicken houses and pay/treat your employees a lot better.

Parasocial Pedestal

It is almost every day that an argument emerges between my group of friends to the lengths which we would go to just have one date with the ravishing, talented, brilliant, interesting, and entertaining Eva Mendes. Those adjectives may be completely fabricated but our parasocial mindset lifts this actress up to a certain heighted pedestal that gives us the mental will to explain at what costs; financial, physical, mental, etc., we would endure to spend only a few hours figuring out who Eva Mendes really is. I have heard insane justification upon justification about how cutting off a foot would be worth it, to how cheetoh-fingers for life is a no brainer. If you don’t know what cheetoh-fingers are it is after you have eaten your delicious bag of cheetoh’s and your fingers are now completely coated with a cheese dust that has a very peculiar texture. From four months in solitary confinement to having a steady two-month diet of worms, the list never ends. My only concern is that if the mystery of this woman went away would these gentlemen be willing to put so much at stake? I believe it is the idea of being inconceivably able to court her that creates a boost in attraction. I would love to find out though! 

Group Project: Superheroes

Group Members: Lauren Kruger-Patchin, Allyson Burger, Dylan Miller, Lauren Rich, Dana Baele

Topic: Superheroes

Argument: They've changed and it can negatively affect children.

http://youtu.be/U7YpjUCtnGU

The Subtweet

Looking at the article by Ashley Parker, Twitter’s Secret Handshake, everyone can see that the ability to launch yourself socially into the midst of public controversy is easier than purchasing a hamburger from McDonald’s. With the simple typing of a hashtag the entire world has a certain topic centralized for its viewing. What I have noticed in the four years I have been on twitter are two things that a lot of users do not care for one bit, the overuse of the hashtag and sub-tweeting about someone. When I say the overuse of a hashtag I mean that a tweet has very little content and is almost completely constructed with hashtag phrases. This comes to irritate people I think because of the unsuccessful attempt to get their point across in an actual sentence and making the reader rely completely on single words to understand the message. The subtweet is an issue that I have noticed extremely more bitterness towards! Urban dictionary defines the subtweet as: “A tweet that mentions a Twitter member without using their actual username. Usually employed for negative or insulting tweets; the person you're mentioning won't see the subtweet in their Twitter timeline as it doesn't contain the @ symbol that every Twitter username has”. This is a contradiction in my book due to the idea of talking behind someone’s back but also making it social. The only result in this method of communication is absolute drama. The reason I chose this topic is because the generation of kids in middle school and high school currently wield smartphones that are capable of creating a dramatic scene like never before that could even result in school policies being remanded or new ones enacted. 

Modern Joan of Arc

In class we discussed the idea of women being funny and I realized we left out a critical aspect, time. When you heard someone speak about a comedienne from the past there were only one or two examples for each decade since the fifties. As the guest speaker wrapped up today she noted at least two-dozen women that are actively pursuing comedy as a profession, unraveling new areas that are and can be funny, and succeeding greatly! I believe that we are making substantial progress in all areas for women just like the Miss Representation piece we viewed a few weeks ago explained. In our discussion today though I saw analysis of a time that our generation as rhetoric’s now have no idea what the mindset was to that of our grandparents and only a slight inclination of that of our parents. The ideas then were stereotypically the way the show Mad Men operated progressing into the less conservative and more open minded style like that of the 80’s sitcoms, encompassing many styles of living. Generation Y has received massive technological content with a tremendous ease of access almost all of our lives which we can use to deeply research the areas mysterious to us allowing us to stray beyond just the knowledge passed out to us by our parents and peers. I believe this time is a new beginning to rid our culture of negative ideals because we have courageous and outgoing people that have seen what doing the right thing no matter what, or standing up against something can do. While we keep the conservative morals our elders have instilled in us we can shape our way to an even more understanding society with the women of comedy acting as modern day Joan of Arc’s.