Blog #10

Going into this class I was not looking forward to it at all. I always hated reading and expected to read some boring Shakespeare all semester. To my surprise, i enjoyed this class. All the books that we read throughout were interesting and all hooked together well. After reading books like Culture Jam, Feed, and 1984 I opened my eyes more and took notice to things going on in the real world. Everyone is on Facebook or Twitter constantly, myself included. People have started to talk like those people in Feed. People are always saying "smh" rather than shaking my head or abbreviating other things, taking away the wholeness of our language. I never really thought that things like technology and talking in short, abbreviated sentences could hurt our society but it definitely can. Now that the class is over im glad I took Dr. Mortimore for Lit. It was very interesting and not a bad class for a class that's fully based on reading. This coming from someone whose already stated that they hate reading.

Blog #8

I think everyone definitely gets their fifteen minutes of fame. There is a point in everyone's life that they are the center of attention. I dont neccessarily think your fifteen minutes of fame means you have to be on national tv. It could be something like winning an award and having a banquet held in your honor for that award, or winning the state championship in high school sports. I think some people have the desire to be that center of attention and they spend their whole life doing things to get them noticed. Going along on that point, some shy people that don't like attention are often thrown right into media mix because of some event of media story. In Hunger Games, Katniss goes from being a poor hunter and gatherer from District 12 to being the top story on the nationally televised games that everyone has to watch. Katniss used this to help her and her family and she benefited from it. Some people get their 15 minutes of fame in other ways for bad reasons. In recent news, members of the Penn State coaching staff got a lot of media attention and a lot more than 15 minutes of coverage on ESPN,ABC, and numerous other news stations. Sad thing about it is, some people would sit there and watch every single show about the scandal because as Americans we find drama amusing and entertaining, wether it be movies, reality TV, or actual news. We always wants to know the newsest gossip and drama. I feel Americans value fame, fortune, and attention way too much.

Blog #6

I think the Federal Government knows a lot more about us then we know. I'm not saying they have hidden cameras all over the country but I feel like they somehow have a way of knowing what's going on. With today's technology, someone had to have found out a way to monitor things from a far. Going on, you can always here people complaining about people knowing their business and what they do. It's most likely because they're one of those people who have to take pictures everytime they go out or do something. You can keep track of some people's whole lives if you go on Facebook. Facebook is so popular because people waste hours just clicking and looking at different things. Millions and millions of people look at facebook, so I really don't see the point of posting your whole life on it. I don't want creepy people looking at what I'm doing all over the world. I sort of got off on a rant about Facebook there, but I can't stand people who do that.

Blog #5

When we were assigned to read Thoreau, I found it sort of ironic.We have been discussing in class about learning things because it's good for us, Thoreau was one of the few writers that I remember from the Lit class I took as a junior in high school. I even found it funny that I remembered his "live deliberately" views. I guess it was good I learned about him, cause I did in fact use it later in life.
Anyway, I really don't feel I could just go live in a shack in the woods by myself. Sure, if something crazy happened and the world went nuts, I guess you would have to adjust to it. I just don't see the point of dropping not only technology but, dropping a part of the way we live. Whether we like it or not, technology does run the world around us. I'm not saying that, having technology effect the way we live, is good thing. I mean sure it helps us out, but since it helps us out so much it changed us. Whether we want to admit it or not, it definitely has made our generation and every generation after us a lot more lazy. All in all I really wouldn't want to give up my technology because I use it so much in my daily life.

Blog # 4

As I was reading the article, "The Dumbest Generation," I got the feeling the author truely felt we were the dumbest generation. Because we have cellphones, TV's, computers, and etc, if they would have had these they would have used them all the time too. As we discussed in our group, we all had the feeling of how the older generation thinks the younger generation has it easier. You could compare it to high school, the upperclassmen pick on the freshman. This is just a tradition that always happens. Older people  might say that younger kids don't go outside as much and that they would play outside all day. Well, when they were growing up there was really wasn't much to do inside.

Going along with that point, Bauerlein attacks students that don't know about ancient Venician history, take a poll, I bet more than half never even heard of the Venicians. Some people no a lot about certain things and less about others, depending on what they take up in college. I'm not saying learning about diverse things isn't good for us. Learning a wide range of things makes us more intelligent. All in all, I think Bauerlein has somewhat of a point but I think he's being way too harsh.

Blog #3

Fifty years ago you would find American couples meeting in different places, bars, clubs, restaraunts, etc. Nowadays, you see many other relationships starting somewhere else, online. In the movie Second Skin you see many couples that are now dating or even engaged that have met in an MMORPG. Massivley multiplayer online role-playing games have taken off as a place for people to make friends or even meet future husbands/wives. Technology has completely changed the way we live, if you would've said to people 20 years ago that they could possibly meet the love of your life online they would've laughed at you. Now, its very common. In Culture Jam, Lasn talks about how technology is bad and is changing Americans to be lazy. It has, but it is very beneficial for us. In the movie we might've found it funny about the couples and how much they played but for them, they are happy as can be. Which in the end, isn't that what all of us Americans are on, the pursuit of happiness?

Blog #2

     As I was reading "It's Gotta Be the Cheese" I kept laughing at the lines like "cover me head to toe in pe-sliced singles of this food." The author repeatedly makes jokes about cheese and how perfect we have made it since we process it and chemically change in a lab. This poem is funny but it indirectly makes fun of Americans. We try so hard to something perfect and waste all this time and money just to make a simple piece of cheese taste "good." In Culture Jam, Lasn is straightforward and just calls out Americans on buying things we don't need and wasting money. He then goes on to talk about how Americans are hypochondriacs and they always think they have something wrong with them. The exact same point that is being made in the "Cheese." We thought something was wrong with the cheese and we had to keep fixing it even though it was probably just as good to start. I'll agree with both authors in some but not all Americans always try to have the best things or always feel they have some sort of sickness.

Introduction

My name is Shane Frank, I'm a finance major here at Ship. I'm 19 years old and from Pottsville, PA. I'm a big sports fan especially baseball.