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PrincessPizza

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 11 months ago

 

What a feeble attempt in paint...

 

So this is what it has come down to...Friday night and I'm creating pizza princesses...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Princess Pizza was made by me, and any money that this creation generates goes directly to our little yellow friends (and pay no attention to the fact that I probably trampled copyrights belonging to coughnintendocough as well as the creator of that pizza).

~

 

January 23

As for digital composition in English 15, 30, 202 classes..classes should begin to incorporate the wiki slowly and with more intensity. I think that it should be used along with, rather than instead of, traditional composition so that students can develop their writing through both mediums.

Some concerns that I have, coming from someone who is nearly computer illiterate, is that some students won't be able to function as well without the concrete traditionalcomposition. What becomes of rough drafts and paper revisions that help us to develop our thoughts? While it is true that today's student has a need for interaction and may be reading less and less, moving composition classes solely to a digital medium would hinder a student's ability to compose on paper...which people still do in the workforce (although less and less.) Also, for whatever reason, online composition-- as in ims and emails-- tends to invite the usage of poor grammar.

And I think my biggest question is what keeps a student from submitting their work for evaluation and then having it edited completely by a classmate? How can a teacher check out a student's work and know what's what when they never saw the original work. I guess that'd also be a great my dog ate my homework.

 

I really think my skeptism comes mostly from unfamiliarity with wikis.

 

 

January 25, 2007

I read over the Social Engineering link again tonight. Before reading the article, I had never before heard of the process of social engineering and I wondered why this whole process is referred to as such. But I guess it makes sense. It is through the manipulation of people or society that these hackers can accheive their ends. But being as I don't know much about social engineering, I also began wondering just how widespread it is. Of course, I always receive emails asking for my ss # or my password to win a million dollars or a dream vacation but the scheme described in the article seemed a bit extreme. It also makes me nervous about people who are supposed to be guarding my private information. You would think that in this case, people working for a credit union would have received some sort of instruction telling them NOT to plug in these mysterious USBs that are turning up everywhere.

Yes, but would they even get the memo? Email attention is plummetting. My department responds by putting the word "URGENT" at the beginning of completely trivial communications, which of course trains me to ignore them, and so on...The real spam filter is yer noggin! Anyway, once everyone gets the memo, there will be another social engineering hack, in evolution.. Still, the FAQ is prety lame, don't you think? IT amounts to: Call people up, pretend you are a women. Funny how this was ( by analogy) Alan Turing's practice differentiating machines from think from those that don't: the imiation game. --Flobius

 

 

January 27

I was talking with my room mate today about RFID technology. She told me that she went into a pet store over break and heard something about it. She said that the store caters to some wealthy people and many of the animals are really expensive. So, at this particular store, and apparently others, they implant microchips into the ears of the pets they sell so that when they run away they can be scanned by whoever finds them and returned. Here's a link to an article I found about it on the web.. Tracking Our Pets The article also talks about placing these chips on really expensive instruments so that if they are stolen they can be tracked. Until I thought about RFID being used to track missing pets, I thought it was a creepy idea. I still don't know how I feel about having a chip inside of me, but I do see how it could be beneficial in some respects. I was reading in internet news about a kid who got caught while he was playing hide and go seek and he died. RFID chips could keep children from these kinds of mishaps or from being kidnapped.

 

January 30

As mentioned above, I see some solid benefits of RFID technology. I spoke through email about it to a friend from Spain and he was saying that pedophiles who have committed previous crimes against children are already being tracked using RFID technology in that country. I don't know if that's happened here, but such laws as Megan's Law force sex offenders to register in their neighborhoods an a type of nondigital tracking. (Bigyellowpeep, you may not want your dog being tracked while he does his business, but wouldn't you like to know if some sexually deviant neighbor was watching you through your bedroom window?)

I was looking at Houdini's post about considerations by American Eagle to begin consumer profiling through RFID. That is pretty scary. But when it comes down to it, I really think I'd rather American Eagle know that I wear a size 8 in jeans than to be tracked by some skeevy sex offender.

The consumer profiling really made me think about a book that I read last semester in one of my classes called FEED . It's a young adult book which I read for an education class, but it's actually pretty good. The characters, who live in the future have transmitters implanted in their heads. They can access the internet or im chat with friends all through their brains. The "feed" in their brain keeps track of their consumer purchases, creates a profile and constantly bombards them with ads for what it believes they'll like. The dehumanizing effects of technology on these characters is horrifying. But, it's more complex than RFID technology. At least I think.. If you get a chance, you should read it!

 

January 31

Is it possible to make the RFID chip only readable to certain people? In that case, I'd place those chips in all of my stuff that I always lose-- my cell phone, my keys, my purse..

After British Airways lost my luggage for two whole weeks last year when I went to Spain, I also think it'd be a good idea to put those little chips in my suitcase.

 

 

February 3

I read The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace today and I thought that it was vague and repetitive. Our government is making attempts to keep us protected from a cyber attack, but I still think the effort is futile. It's like trying to fence in outer space. The internet is constantly expanding and people looking to attack can always manipulate whatever security system is in place. Also, the Strategy discussed a little bit balancing the need to protect cyberspace vs. Americans' privacy. But surveillance is at the heart of protecting cyberspace. I wonder how intrusive the surveillance is/will become.

I was thinking a lot about the Social Engineering article that we read in relation to The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. In the Social Engineering article, the author showed how easy it is to exploit a person's ignorance by appealing to his or her curiosity with the USBs. Cyberspace could never be fully secured because everybody has access to it and not everybody is privied to some kind of training to recognize potential threats.

I think that the government should continue to evaluate possible threats and try to keep security systems up to date. But the most important thing, I would think, is to have a response prepared for possible attacks. The strategy talked about how fast past attacks have infected computers nationwide. At least if they know what to do to stop a cyber virus from spreading, the damage will be kept to a minimum.

We talked a little bit in class on Thursday about security being a mindset more than a reality. And about how we can really only evaluate our security through hindsight. How do we know our air plane is secure? We may feel more secure when we go through all of the checkpoints in the airport, but only after we have landed and are still alive do we really know. Post 9-11, we are constantly being reminded of all of the possible threats upon us. I thought that this strategy was more or less the same. No matter what barriers we put in place, we are always at some kind of risk for an attack. Maybe The Strategy to Secure Cyberspace makes us feel more secure because we can refer to it and think our government has things under control. But is it even worth worrying about something that we really can't do much about?

 

February 4

Looking at the FBI page, I was wondering how they chose which files to display. The page kind of reminded me of the celebrity gossip magazines that my room mate buys at the grocery store. I read about the opium pipe found in Billie Holiday's hotel room and the extortion letters that Clark Gable received. The list of investigation targets is so broad. Surely, there are lots of other musicians/actors who have had similar FBI investigations. Where are their files? How does the FBI choose who to place into this database? Where do they put files about the ordinary people that they are tracking? I searched my own name but they don't seem to have anything on file for me. Yet.

Some files, such as the one for the Grateful Dead was almost completely blacked out. Why would there be a more detailed file about a single drug charge against Holiday (that she was eventually acquitted of) and almost nothing viewable to the public about the Grateful Dead-- a group which lost two of its members to drugs and spawned a whole community of deadheads that was known for their drug use? Holiday may have been a drug user, but I would argue that she definitely did not have the impact that the Grateful Dead had on promoting drug use.

 

 

February 8

Society Against the State

If you were to throw the primitive subjects of Pierre Clastres's case studies into the mix here at Penn State, they wouldn't be the anal retentive, over-acchieving types, they'd be the Cs get Degrees types who do enough to get by. Slaaaaackers. For most, the C is not good enough. While I value hard work, I definitely identified with the subjects of Clastres's study in Society Against the State. They work hard enough to get things done and then enjoy themselves.

Today, I handed in a written assignment that fulfilled all of the requirements. There was no page requirement. I fully answered each question in just short of 3 pages. The girl next to me did it in 8. I thought to myself she must've really thrown a lot of bs into that. Our society just tells us that we have to always be working. We can never just be because we can always be in a better state. People in our society work way too hard and too often place their attention on the wrong things. I was thinking a lot about my dad when I read this. During the busy times of the year, he will work everyday of the week-- sometimes for 14-16 hours-- leaving time only to sleep. I do not worry about our relationship or anything like that, but definitely his health. Here we are, the so-called advanced society, and we spend sleepless nights, killing ourselves with stress over meaningless stuff.

Clastres says that primitive societies can be characterized by their rejection of work. But I think that maybe it's that developed society can be characterized by it's obsessive devotion to it.

 

February 12

I haven't been able to get a hold of Ubik yet.. checked out three different bookstores and trying webster's tomorrow.

But I have read through chapter 5 of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Don't know if we are still supposed to discuss it, but I really got into it. The Bitchuns vs. the Ad hocs rival over Disney attractions is really quite strange and kind of funny. When Jules describes each of the attractions, I remember them from when I went to Disney World about 10 years ago. It seems like a really odd choice of plot and setting. Personally, I don't think the Hall of Presidents is worth saving.. that attraction sucked! But the haunted mansion was pretty awesome. Hopefully Jules saves it.

The idea of people being able to access the internet through their brains is kind of scary. It reminds me of a book that I described in an earlier blog, Feed. When I started reading Feed, the idea of having internal internet capabilities seemed preposterous to me and I really couldn't see that ever catching on. But the more I read that book, the more I decided that having a chip installed in your head to be able to get online really is conceivable. I wouldn't ever want it personally, but people are already attached to their cell phones, ipods, laptops; it wouldn't even be that much of a change.

When they were talking about deadheading and waking up in the future, I kept thinking of Walt Disney himself. Is it true that he was cryogenically frozen? Is that even possible at present?

mobius writes about this in his book __Wetwares__. yes, people are getting frozen!-mobius

 

Napping definitly is the time when the body recovers energey and repairs any processes that may be breaking down. Saying so, it's no wonder people who nap more are healthier, especially in the heart, an organ that probably (I'm no doctor) works the hardest of all. It's too bad it's so hard for us to find time for napping, especially starting this Monday and especially after Spring Break, when napping will definitly become a very very cherished occasion in our lives. Hopefully none of us have heart attacks. ~BigYellowPeep

 

 

February 15

I just started Ubik after class thanks to a borrowed copy from Ishmael (as he is called). I have been reading other peoples' blogs the past few days about how confusing the book is. I am just thirty pages in so I cannot say too much yet. Although a friend recommended that I read Valis by Philip K. Dick and I remember thinking that that too was pretty out there. The beginning of Ubik reminds me of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Particularly how these two books treat death up to this point. Why is it that these futuristic novelists portray death as they do? In both Ubik and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the dead don't actually die as we know it. One has the half lives and the other has backups of people that can be recloned in case the person dies or malfunctions. In Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, only when a person wants to die, do they put a true end to it.

From what I understand about cryogenic freezing from the brief browsing I just did, people freeze themselves now with the hopes that in the future doctors will be able to raise them from the dead, like in the story. I don't really see the appeal to coming back hundreds of years from now when everything and everyone has changed. Imagine a caveman trying to adapt to our life here and now. I'm thinking Pauly Shore in __Encino Man__. Strangely, also set in 1992...

 

February 19

I have read about 150 pages of Ubik as of now and am really interested to see what will happen. All of the characters surrounding Joe Chip are dying off mysteriously as a result of the bomb on Luna and he is constantly regressing. It's not clear yet (and for this reason I don't want to read other blogs)who is actually dead and what is really going on. Joe wants to get to Des Moines where Runciter's body is supposedly lying in state, but Joe keeps receiving cryptic messages and believes that Runciter may still be alive in an alternate body?

I still am unsure of what a ubik is. Based off of the ads, I thought previously that it referred to just about anything. And in the last few pages I have started to think that it is an elixir of sorts to prolong Joe's life. But after reading through the ads again, ubik is always used to improve situations.

 

February 20

I got to thinking about these half lives again and the way that these dead bodies are kept in moratoriums. It makes me think of people who are brain dead and are kept alive in hopes that they'll return to their former selves. They are just sustained, as are the people in half life in Ubik. In the book, characters visit their dead loved ones to talk to them and they can respond. With people in comas, obviously they cannot respond, but loved ones still go to their bed sides to talk to them believing that they can understand even when they cannot respond. In both cases, it is just a need to hold onto someone, even if they are not their former self.

 

February 25

Something on page 39-40 really struck me as I was reading Cosmic Trigger today. The author is describing his work with LSD with Tim Leary. They describe how the drug has such incredible power to alter peoples' personalities and innate traits. For example, on page 39 the author describes how Dr. Richard Alpert "treats" a homosexual and after his LSD treatment he "became mostly heterosexual." It is an interesting case that LSD is so powerful that it could actually alter someone's sexual preferences.

The author also makes the case about the prison convicts who take LSD and even though the rate of convicts returning to prison is about 80%, the majority who took the drug stayed out of prison. However, I wonder if the same would have occurred if they gave this group a drug they could feel the effects of (like aderol or something not very strong), and told them it was some mind-altering drug, if it would have had similar effects. While both the experiments with the homosexual man and the prison convicts are types of behavior modification, I am not suggesting that giving a homosexual person a fake drug would alter their sexual orientation. But in terms of behaviors that we have more control over, does the whole idea of self-fulfilling prophecy play a role?

Of course I know that if you are a long-time drug user, the drugs will eventually have effects on your brain, particularly how fast you can process information. My sister and I used to go to a lot of concerts and see all these old hippies there who looked completely out of it. We would always say to each other "well, he never came back" referring to all of the tripping he probably did 30 years ago. But this is the first I have heard of LSD causing changes in a person's personality traits, particularly with respect to one particular aspect of their life-- like their sexual preference. I have also heard that LSD causes people to become depressed because it affects the level of serotonin in the brain.

 

Yea, I also thought that was very interesting how LSD in combination with psychotheraputic techniques can alter behavior and personality. I believe that when psychedelic agents are used in combination with therapy, it can be a very powerful medium for change in your life and can be a catalyst for the theraputic process. Please read my last entry if you would like an example. I think it is frightening to some people that everything you know about yourself can be turned upside down by a simple chemical. To me, I warmly accept change. --GoNZo

 

Ah, the placebo effect. It's why I feel that much of the same benefits can be attained with your own mind and nothing else i.e through meditation, tantra, marathon running, etc. If its psychosomatic, do we need the drug at all? ~ Ceridwen

Well, this might be the case, but many hallucinogens truly do alter the mind and body in fascinating ways. The only reason people shy from drugs at all are the implicit dangers and/or the stigma attached to them by the ruling body...If you can believe it, every time I partake in such an experience, I welcome the changes it brings...almost as if I'm enacting some planned ruination of the self, a smash to the system, destroying my mind and body for the sights, sounds, and thoughts I know are to follow... - moops

 

 

March 1

The mind-altering effects of LSD are not unique to the drug. Thinking about what happens to people when they focus their brains intensely upon something can have similar effect. I was thinking about this after our class discussion today about how you can convince yourself that you are well or not well. I certainly believe that this is true.There are countless cases of people atrributing their healing to a positive mindset and a firm resolve to beat cancer, or whatever their illness may be.

Another example that I thought of after class is when people are intensely involved in prayer (as Ceridwen stated already above about meditation), it is said that there are actually chemical changes in the brain. This can attribute to a person's feeling of communion with God. If you have ever seen or read about a whirling dirvish, you can imagine how intensely involved in prayer they are. You could even say that they are experiencing a high in the sense that their reality is incredibly altered by prayer. So I agree with Ceridwen in that if it is psychosomatic, do we need the drug at all?

 

March 2

I was thinking about the first law of Discordianism: Whatever you believes imprisons you. I have been sitting here trying to come up with some kind of argument that having a firm set of beliefs actually sets you free, but I cannot. I believe in many things, and I agree that it closes me off to other ideas. But I think that the claim that having convictions makes you a convict is overstated. Besides, contrary to what Wilson says about NOT BELIEVING IN ANYTHING...I would argue that he believes in LSD.

 

I'm going to have to say that the effects of LSD are quite unique and very different from the chemical changes that arise through meditation. In a way, taking a drug is the lazy man's path to supposed "enlightenment," as opposed to hours of intense concentration/meditation/prayer. I also do not believe that a positive mindset and strong willpower are enough to beat debilitating terminal illnesses, no matter how long you commune with God or whirl around like an idiot. People need to realize that there is nothing transcendental to the chemical changes wrought by drugs/meditation/what have you. You and Ceridwen are right in one way, though. It is psychosomatic, and it really isn't necessary...but it does make things a whole lot easier. With drugs, I don't have to force myself into any sort of mental state...the mental states come to me...I also agree that having a set of beliefs isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as you're always ready to give up on any one of them when something better comes along. It's always the simple, straightforward beliefs that start assimilating the other facets of your life, forcing a particular viewpoint on seemingly related issues (which is where the problems arise, when your beliefs start making decisions for you). Being a Catholic, for instance, means many things (being pro-life, against gay marriage and stem cell research, etc.) for the believer, which is exactly the sort of construct that leads to societal issues that should never exist...I mean, a national debate on whether or not homosexuals can get married? In a country where some schools still teach creation over evolution? Where life-saving research is curtailed by the government because of religious intolerance to certain scientific progress? I mean, what sort of world do we live in? It makes me sick sometimes...It essentially comes down to this: I could love God, cherish life, follow the Ten Commandments...but does that mean I get to impose such an outlook on everyone else? - moops

 

March 10

Moops, I agree with some of the things that you are saying. Some people subscribe to a certain set of beliefs--like a religion, and automatically follow every tenent of that religion even to the point that it is contradictory. For example, you point out that Catholics are against gay marriage and stem cell research. But Isn't one of the most basic tenents of Christianity to love thy neighbor as yourself? How can a faith that is so pro-life deny the progression of stem cell research that would save so many people? I used to hold the belief that stem cell research was wrong. Afterall, isn't it only up to God to decide when a person's life should end? Then I became really good friends with a girl who is sick with Cystic Fibrosis. CF is a disorder that is characterized by a thick mucous that kills the lung. The function of the lung is slowly reduced. Most people are on an organ waiting list before early adulthood, and many are dead by the age of 25. She told me that through stem cell research, science may be able to one day grow her a lung and save her life. I am a devout Catholic--yet I support these scientific ventures that will hopefully save my friend's life. How could I not? Maybe I am an anomaly to the Catholic community, but I honestly doubt that I am.

I think that your argument is thought provoking, but you generalize a whole group of people. It reminds me of the time I spent in Spain. I was probably asked 5 times if fast food was my favorite type of food. Just because I am American, doesn't mean I am getting my Big Mac fix every day. I might be a democrat and favor some republican values.. People are complex. Just because a person is A doesn't mean they are absolutely B as well. Whoa, I think we got ourselves a premise lock argument..

 

 

March 11

Wilson talks a lot about slowing down the aging process in the middle of his book. In a quote on page 122 from Robert Prehoda, M.D., he says, "It is possible that we may be able to slow down biological aging, doubling or tripling the average life-span... If every case of aging can be corrected and prevented, we might all be potential Methuselahs, living 1,000 years or more." The fact that educated, intelligent people have been studying immortality with some degree of seriousness is scary. Considering the progression of medicine, I would not discount this idea completely. I think it would be great to extend the average person's life to live another 20 or 30 youthful years, but I am surprised that so many people would honestly want to live forever. Hubert Humphrey says on page 120 that "we may look back to present day attitudes toward death as 'primitive' and 'medieval' in the way we now look back upon a once-dreaded killer like tuberculosis." I really do not think this will ever be the case. Death is the natrural way of making way for genearations to come. What do these eternal life researchers think about overpopulation? Besides, I think that most people would grow weary of this life and wonder what happens after death.

This part of the book is really reminding me of UBIK.

 

March 12

Wilson notes so many coincidences, specifically pertaining to the number 23. These synchronicities are something considering all of the facts that he sites behind them. But it always seems that synchronicities are more apparent when you are looking for them. Do you ever notice that when you are looking for a sign that you see them everywhere? If you say a prayer to God, somehow the sign on the billboard suddenly relates directly to your life. If you have just ended a relationship, a song on the radio seems to be singing directly to you. The point that I am trying to make is that if you want to see a specific sign, you can train your brain to see it. Wilson sees all of these 23s everywhere and it seems pretty amazing that they keep recurring. But what about all of the numbers that he ignores?

 

March 13

It's an interesting point of synchronicity that Wilson points out at the end of the book when Luna dies. Wilson and his wife are obviously mourning the loss of their daughter. He talks about a message that he received from Tim Leary that read, "You are surrounded by a network of love and gratitude.." Wilson goes on to say how shocked he was that his occult belief is more than just mere coincidences--but an actual network. And that there is a similar network of love in Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions.. This need to express love and to be loved in return is a common need that so many belief systems revolve around.

Leary later says to Arlen that the whole point of his work on brain change is to spread positive energy. Similarly, I think that this is the basic goal of most religions. For example Karma and reincarnation in Hinduism or the Christian commandment to do unto others as you'd have done unto you are just two examples of ways that religion tries to spread this positive energy by encouraging its followers to spread love. This "final secret of the Illuminati" as Wilson refers to it on the las page is not as profound as you'd expect because in so many words it is the base principle to all the major religions.

 

Final Project idea: Societies of Control Quotes Webpage/Book -Call Me Ishmael

 

 

March 26

REMIX!!!!

 

Ubik Mentos Remix

 

Explanation of Remix

 

Wow, I love the mentos high in Joe's hand shining like the sun...What a beacon of hope! Your mentos remix really brings to life the awesome transformation power of a simple breath mint, and indeed a Mentos can make a person feel alive, fresh, rejuvenated, kind of cold, frosty, but sensational. I like the narrative because it reitterated the ridiculousness of the cure-all, the anti-entropy spray, the ubiquity that can take the form of anything. Mentos really are The Freshmaker, so comparing them to a can of Ubik is just so damn clever. HIGH grade, like B+ - A Peep would say. ~Peep

 

I think the connection of UBIK’s commercial like qualities and it’s relation to Mentos is creative. I felt like the story could have been developed further, so I will give it an A-. --GoNZo

I agree with what Peep said earlier, your imagery of the Mentos furthered the idea of redemption from products. What your remix does successfulyl is set up this creepy idea of redemption from production, which seems kind of anti-entropic. That's just what I got from the remix, but either way, it's an awesome juxtaposition of the entropic Dick ubik to the Progressive Pizza Remix. Also, way to bring out the commercial ideas, as Gonzo pointed out, from the spurts at the beginning of the chapters into the "actual prose."

Grade=A-

Call Me Ishamel

 

 

April 4

Our culture today is so obsessed with ownership. Mobius talked in class a little bit about his son and how he doesn't like to share his toys. I never wanted my grubby brothers anywhere near my barbie collection or anything else that was "mine" either. One time I left a few trolls out and my brother shaved off all of their soft bright-colored hair. Everything we own, even from childhood, we perceive as an extension of ourselves. Everything has a value tacked onto it.

Drawing parallels to today, I am thinking of my next door neighbors. I was looking through their fridge the other day for something to eat and I noticed a note on the carton of eggs. "Meg- 4 eggs." They monitor their groceries down to how many eggs in a carton belong to each room mate. To me, that's pretty absurd, but I really didn't think much about it until I sat down just now to wiki a little bit. Our culture is so obsessed with ownership, but understandably so. We are brought up to be constantly mindful of our stuff.

We live in a society where we have to lock our doors or someone will come in and steal your stuff. We lock our cars, our bikes. Our houses and our cars are equipped with alarm systems. We go to classes and are handed different exams than the people sitting next to us. We hand in papers and are told that there is some database looking for plagerism. Our culture is obsessed with protecting its stuff because if not someone will come along and steal it.

The internet just makes all of this stealing so much easier than before. Everything is just a click away from being ours. The internet has made us so much lazier. Now, we really don't have to go through much of a process to steal peoples' ideas; it's just a click away. This applies to to actual robbery as well. Stealing a person's identity or their credit card information is not as much of a risk or an effort through the internet as it is by entering someone's home. |

 

April 6

Yarrrrrrr. Piracy! (www.piratesinfo.com, I just tried to turn this into a link, but I it wouldn't work so I give up.)

I think that musicians should share their "booty."

Although it is incredibly easy to steal music from composers on the internet, it is unethical robbery. However, I do think that musicians should give a little to the public for free. There are so many cases of people getting pounded by lawsuits asking for exorbitant amounts of money for downloading free tunes. But it so easy and accessible on the internet that it is hardly a crime when it has become so common place.

I went to a winery last weekend to taste some local wines. For those of you who have never been wine tasting, the wineries usually give a free taste test of a couple of wines. The expectation is that they will receive a good return if people enjoy the wine and then buy a few bottles for later consumption.

Similarly, musicians should share a few of their songs for free and then keep the others from the public unless they buy them. This would force musicians to write an entirely good album instead of writing a few good songs and then rounding out a CD with a bunch of talentless crap.

 

April 9

Burroughs jumps around a lot in The Electronic Revolution. The only thing that I am really thinking about now after reading the article is about spoken words and where their written counterparts came from. As he points out, there are so many words, like leg, that seem so arbitrarily associated with the image that the word actually represents. In early languages, there were symbols to represent the words instead of letters from the alphabet. Words must have had some meaning to someone along the way though. In high school, there was a club that made up words and then tried to circulate the words so that they were spoken in normal conversation. It was a wierd group. Not many words caught on. But, my English teacher created the word "snizzle" as the tingling sensation that you feel in your nose right before you sneeze. She said that this word always came to her mind when she was about to sneeze. I think it works too. If she had said that the sensation is called a "fluptag," I don't think it would fit and I probably wouldn't even remember it.

What is amazing to me is that what I associate in my mind is totally different from what other people make associations with in their own minds. When I think of the word mom, the dominating association is obviously my own mom. When I think of the word dog, I think of the yellow lab, Daisy, that I had my entire childhood. Even when I hear a word that doesn't have any sentimental associations with it, like say the word lamp, a different image pops into my brain than what someone else might think of.

I looked at the following from the article and was reminded of a girl in my class last semester who sees every word in symbols. Burroughs says, "The written word is of course a symbol for something and in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it may be a symbol for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not true of an alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial resemblance to a leg." This girl from my class, Catherine, sees everything in symbols that are more often than not, totally unrelated to the word. For example, she went through the class that the three of us shared last semester and told each person what image she associates with their name. Peep and Ishmael, you know what I am talking about. My name, Lauren, she associated with the image of a half eaten plum. Brenton, weren't you two pieces of plastic that clapped together? And Tom, I don't remember yours? Never in my life have I heard that I reminded someone of a half eaten plum. So, it is just interesting to me how words can hold different meanings for everyone.

 

Society of Control: Voice Wiki Proposal (In Progress)

Society of Control: Voice Wiki Idea Page

Society of Control: Words of Wisdom

Society of Control: Wiki Words of Wisdom

 

April 15

I would love to use our project in a number of ways. One creative way that we decided upon last week in class was to draw upon various quotes that classmates have written on their wikis and to remix them in some way. I liked this for the creative aspect of it, but I kept thinking that I would love to have a functional aspect of this assignment as well, something that could be useful to other people in a concrete way even beyond the boudaries of our class. Peep came up with the idea to use our soundboard as an aid for second language learners or people with speech impediments. I think that this is a fabulous idea. Actually, I just spoke with the principal of the school that I am doing my pre-student teaching at about implementing a basic Spanish language program there in the fall. Students are not introduced to second languages until they reach high school, which in my opinion is far too late. I am going to be creating a curriculum for this program along with another student teacher, and I think that using the wiki along with a soundboard could be really helpful. I am excited to see where this goes.

 

 

Assignment Recap.doc

 

Words of Wisdom ReMiX

 

Ishmaels's Rrremix

 

The MiXeD uP Board

 

 

 


Comments (1)

Anonymous said

at 7:15 pm on Jan 23, 2007

it's recombinant genuis! What habitat does this organism require, and how can we convert it to big profits?

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