The Argument...?

Despite the fact that it's been over a month since we tackled The Argument, I still find myself asking, "What exactly was he arguing, other than the fact that he is a well-informed political observer who knows how to name-drop like nobody's business?" Okay, so I know that he was following the progressive movement to remake Democratic politics, but I can't help but have the feeling that his argument was not particularly helpful to further my understanding of the issues we discussed in this class. Which is why I think that this book shouldn't be included in the required reading for the next semester of this class.

Your Design Here

Yesterday I bought a buy one get one free cigarette deal on Camel Infused, and one of the two boxes was completely white, with the words "YOUR DESIGN HERE" on the front of the pack. When I turned it over, it told me, "This is not just a pack of smokes. This is a chance for you to tap into your creativity. We're inviting you to design one of 100 original signature packs that will be created each year." So, apparently we have taken design to a whole new level. Now, not only are we afforded the chance to design our own pair of Vans or Nikes, but our own cigarette pack. This left me wondering, "Does the RJReynolds Tobacco Company know that their target audience/consumers are likely to be creative types?" I'm not sure what the correlation is between creativity and smoking cigarettes, but I thought it was interesting that Daniel Pink's theory even extends to a product that less and less people are convinced to buy (what with all the anti-smoking campaigns, and smoking bans in many counties and cities).

Internet Regulations

I do not think that the government should regulate internet content. As of right now, the internet serves as the only means of locating unbiased information on practically any subject. I realize that things like pornography are objectionable to many people, but I think it's better to be able to view material with strong sexual content in the privacy of one's own home than elsewhere. I think that parents should be in charge of what their kids come across on the internet, and so should take on the responsibility of installing filters to block unwanted content from entering their homes. When it comes to content that in and of itself is illegal (child porn, human trafficking) I do feel that the government should intervene and find a way to put a stop to such terrible activities.

The Eggplant Fiasco

Write a Mini-Saga was the topic for the first Portfolio activity in the Story section of Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind", so I decided to take a whack at it. Here's what I came up with:

She excitedly sampled the fresh eggplant everyone raved about. As the hours passed, her stomach began to rumble in dissent. In the eighth hour all hope was lost as she ran outside, flushed and queasy. It was mighty tasty going down, but coming back up resembled a hideous, slimy concoction.

This happens to be a true story. I was working a job and was coerced into taste testing the eggplant, which I had eaten many times during my childhood. As you might have guessed, it did not turn out as well as I had hoped. Such is life.

Hi, A/S/L?

I was thinking about the whole phenomenon of people pretending to be someone other than who they really are on the internet, and was reminded of an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit I saw last year. The episode revolved around an internet-based virtual world, clearly meant to resemble Second Life. The detectives were brought in to investigate the kidnapping of a woman whose character in the virtual world was a stripper who had gathered a sizeable internet fan base. I began to consider the different reasons why someone would want to portray themselves as something they are not, especially a stripper of all things. I think that this has something to do with the phenomenon that we see in various places on the internet where people feel that because they are behind their computer screen they can do or say anything they want.

I have definitely felt that security that is lacking in real life before, which is not to say that I have portrayed myself as someone else. I have merely felt more comfortable being frank and honest about things that I would probably not have been willing to talk about in real life. The fact that the internet is this intangible "place" where many things are not as they seem is probably liberating for a lot of people, but sort of scary for others. I know I am very aware of the fact that many of the strangers I might encounter while playing games on Yahoo! or checking my MySpace could have unterior motives. No way am I going to give out my real name or location to someone when they are nothing more to me than typed words on a computer screen. If you are taking the time to create an alternate persona for yourself on the internet, you clearly have some sort of motive in mind, and what you're selling I ain't buying!

Googled

I have Googled my name before and never come up with anything interesting (or relevant) about myself, but tried again for this assignment. What I have found is that any variation of my full name pulls up hundreds of thousands of results. For example:

Searching Susannah L. Parker brings up 123,000 results.
Searching Susannah Lauren Parker brings up 252,000 results.
Searching Susannah Parker brings up 1,550,000 results!

Basically what comes up has nothing to do with me. Mainly, the results have to do with geneaologies of various families from the 1700 and 1800s. Another page showed that someone named Susannah Parker is a spokesperson for Save the Children UK, an independent children's charity that works to get every child proper healthcare, food, education and protection. There is also a book called Elusive Love by Catherine Lanigan in which one of the main characters is named Susannah Parker. I was not really feeling up to the task of looking through countless pages of search results to see if any of the websites were actually about me, so I stopped looking after ten or fifteen pages.

I definitely think that this means my name does not Google well. I was expecting at least to see my Facebook page pop up in the search results, but it didn't. Then again, this might have something to do with the security settings I have set for my profile. I realize that I do have an extremely common last name (which is obvious from all the ancestry-type websites that popped up), but I thought my first name was at least different enough that there would not be so many others who shared my full name. Maybe one day I'll become important enough to appear on various websites for all the good deeds I will have done. Hey, I can always dream, can't I?

These are the Days of Our Lives

I was reading the Washington Post article about social networking sites and was struck by the comment Nicholas A. Christakis made about Facebook serving as a way to watch soap operas of people we know (or sort of know). I've definitely used Facebook in this way on multiple occasions. Just recently, I was browsing the new photos that my Facebook friends had posted and came across an album entitled "Marriage" by a guy I went to high school with. Out of curiosity, I opened the album and was surprised to find pictures of him and a girl, appearing to have just been married! Now, this guy and I were by no means close friends in high school, nor are we now, but there's just something so juicy about knowing info like this about people you knew and no longer see. Immediately after finding out that this guy got married, I texted one of my good friends from high school about it (who happens to be in Ohio at Oberlin College), wanting to know if he already knew or not. We then proceeded to have an in-depth conversation about how we just can't fathom being married at this point in our lives and how unexpected it was that that particular guy was the first (well, second) from our class to get married, etc.



This phenomenon may have something to do with the high school community that we both were a part of. There was almost no room for secrets among classmates when we were in high school. If something interesting happened to you, it was almost guaranteed that the whole school would be gossiping about it within the next few days. From my reaction to finding out this tidbit of information about someone well after high school ended, I can see that somehow that tendency to gossip has travelled with me and probably my classmates as well. Facebook serves as a way to make it easier for us to fulfill that need to gossip. With the click of a mouse, we have access to whatever is going on in the lives of our former classmates who are spread out across the country. Personally, I make use of the website to keep up with what's going on with people I may not get the chance to catch up with regularly. As for the other people I'm Facebook friends with, sometimes their lives do transform into something of a soap opera that I can turn on or off at will.

Daily Kos

I actually began reading the Daily Kos last semester while in Professor Snyder's Intro to Media Studies class. We were each required to follow a political blog for the course of the semester to keep up with the goings on of the world. The Daily Kos is "the largest progressive community blog in the United States." It was founded in 2002 and is still published by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a veteran "offended that the freedoms he pledged his life for were so carelessly being tossed aside by the reckless and destructive Republican administration." The Daily Kos features blogging from upwards of tewnty different contributing writers, and is thoroughly liberal (obviously).

The maority of recent posts on the site pertain to the presidential race. For example, one of today's post is titled, "Obama the New Jersey Favorite", and many of the posted comments seem to be by loyal, liberal readers. Most of these posts focus on the democratic presidential candidates. Markos Zuniga, the site's founder, was also mentioned extensively in The Argument.

Political Identity

The majority of my political identity was probably formed sometime during high school. Prior to those four years, I really did not care much about what was going on in the world of politics, but was aware that my mom was an Independent and my dad was a Democrat (they both, as far as I can remember, tended to vote for the Democratic candidate). When I hit high school, I began to realize that the overwhelming majority of people around me were very liberal, even more so than my own family. I don't want to write this in a way that makes it seem like I was influenced solely by my high school environment - I still based my political identity around my own personal beliefs. I think what really happened was that I became aware that some of the things I had been taugh at Catholic school (elementary and middle school) I did not agree with. As we touched on in class, it is difficult to separate politics from religion and I think that has had a strong effect on my beliefs.



My political beliefs are liberal - I am pro-choice, support gay marriage, am concerned with the environment and conserving our resources, fully supportive of civil rights (I don't think anyone should be discriminated against due to their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.), and am against the death penalty. One of the main reasons why I could never be someone who discriminated against others is because I am a biracial American. Even if I wanted to, it would be impossible for me to associate myself strictly with one racial or ethnic group, so how can I think that it's right for others to act as though certain people are inferior simply because of their identity? I don't like to think that there are still people out there who have a problem with interracial marriage, but I know it's probably true. My political views reflect my personal experience as someone who can potentially experience discrimination just for being who I am, and that is not something I see as just in any situation. I have been interacting with people from all different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds for my entire life, so I never though in terms of favorable vs. unfavorable identities. I guess I have my parents to thank for that: my mom has always made sure to lead me into new, unfamiliar experiences, meeting all kinds of people along the way.

Sweet kicks!

While scanning the portfolios in Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, I came across one activity that sounded both entertaining and creative. On page 94 he suggests that the readers "Participate in the 'Third Industrial Revolution'"; in this case, go online and design something original and unique, specifically, Vans skate shoes or a pair of Nikes. Since I had already been to the NIKEiD website (yeah, I played high school basketball and so spent some time browsing various athletic-type websites) I decided to check out the shoe designer at Vans.com. The shoe I picked was the Vans slip-on, which I already own a pair of that have a blue and green chair design (that gets mistaken for dinosaurs sometimes), and I used to have the original black and white checkered ones as well.

Here's a link to the slip-ons I designed.

So, you might be asking yourself, why does it matter that any ordinary person can go to websites like these and design their own personal version of a particular product? Think back to what Pink said about creating products in an age of abundance: it's no longer enough to make something that's cheap and functional, these days it must also be aesthetically pleasing and meaningful. In the case of these personalized Vans sneakers, before you even begin to pick out the colors and designs you want, it asks you how many pairs you would like to order. To me, this says that, for example, three friends could go online and design a shoe that they all agree on, purchase three pairs and each would derive some sort of joy from sharing a unique pair of vans with his/her two best friends. On the Nike website, you can create a customized basketball shoe for an entire team, and even have a personalized, stitched monogram on each pair of shoes. This was something I thought was great when I played basketball because I though if I had a pair of shoes with my name or nickname on them they would be more special to me than some other shoes that anyone else could buy.

I totally agree with Pink that there is an innate human need to own things that are unique - nobody wants to show up at party wearing the exact same dress as someone else. Hell, I'd rather have someone create a custom gown especially for me if it didn't cost a fortune. It makes us feel like individuals when we have the opportunity to obtain items that we can put our own personal touch on, or at least happier with the material things we choose to surround ourselves with.

Follow the Links

I started out at U Roulette and the first website I was taken to was The Black Collegian Online: The Career Site for African-American College Students. As I scrolled down looking for the next link to click on, I was startled to see in their "College Updates" section on the homepage a picture and blurb about a girl I went to high school with. Basically it mentioned that she was an NYU graduate who studied abroad in Buenos Aires her junior year and was able to make connections that helped her get a Fullbright-MtvU Fellowship. As it turns out, while studying abroad she developed a deep interest in conducting research on Panamanian Spanish Reggae music and Afro-Panamanian identity. The entire article gave detailed information about her research, graduate, and post-graduate goals, as well as a link at the bottom for more information on the Fullbright-MtvU Fellowship. This took me to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs website, a division of the Department of State. I was then drawn to a link labeled "Citizen Exchanges" which turned out to be exactly what I thought it was. I learned that U.S. citizens (through nonprofit organizations) can take part in a citizen exchange program with a member of another culture in order to promote intercultural understanding and respect.

Personally I think this is extremely worthwhile idea, especially with the increasing amount of globalization occurring in our world. In many cases Americans tend to forget that just because we are the world's biggest economic power does not mean that we are the center of the universe. I think there are too many people who take for granted the opportunities Americans are afforded and forget that other cultures have different values than we do. It is important for us to take the time to recognize and respect those from different cultures in order to guarantee that we will be able to work together in the future. Even now, as we discussed in Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind, many U.S. jobs are being moved overseas, meaning that American businessmen/women need to gain intercultural communication skills and experience.

Facebook: Punishable by death?

Obviously this story is even more disturbing than the incident involving the teenage girl who hung herself after receiving hateful messages from her Myspace "boyfriend", who turned out to be the parents of a former friend with whom she had had a falling out. In a strictly Islamic culture like that of Saudi Arabia, it seems only natural that women who cannot otherwise express feelings of sexuality would turn to the internet to do so. I feel like a lot of people still see the internet as this massive invisible place where we can pretend to be whoever we want to be, or do things we would never dream of doing in real life. In this case, because Saudi women are forbidden to interact with any man they please, they have turned to this virtual world to derive some sort of satisfaction from their personal relationships. I think this demonstrates that within the culture as a whole many women feel stifled by the strict regulations that are imposed on them. If given the chance to safely protest in public (without the fear of persecution or even death) these women would not feel like they have to use social networking websites to secretly engage in activities that are punishable in Saudi culture.

On the other hand, as we have become increasingly aware of lately, the activities we engage in online are not necessarily as secret as we might have hoped. If employers can hire people to investigate the online habits of job and internship applicants, why can't Saudi authorities expose women who are forming secret online relationships and posting "revealing pictures"? (After looking at the picture included with the article I began to wonder just how revealing these pictures were. Maybe they just showed these women exposing their arms and/or legs? That seems like it would be enough to enrage officials in such a strict Sunni Islam society.) The only difference here is the punishments: not getting the job you applied for because you posted pictures of yourself and your friends binge drinking on St. Patty's Day vs. potentially being beaten and shot by a male relative or government official for lewd online behavior. As the woman in the article mentioned, "blocking the site would be pointless because people would simply switch to similar sites." If this is truly the case, then these women must value their freedom of expression enough that they are willing to risk their own safety to engage in activities that their culture deems taboo. It could just be that I'm coming from an extremely Westernized viewpoint, but if enough members of the culture are so strongly against cultural practices, doesn't that mean they must be somewhat outdated?

Wiki-Wiki-What?

I am definitely guilty of turning to Wikipedia whenever I come across a subject that I'd like to know more about. Where else can you go to find out the basics about everything from adult comics (naughty comic books for adults) to an article on Children's Day around the world? (If you were curious as to why I mentioned those two seemingly random topics, they just happened to be the first two that came up when I clicked Random Article.) At the very least, a few times a week I will hop onto Wikipedia any number of reasons: when someone mentions something in conversation that I know nothing about, when watching tv or a movie, or even when I'm doing some reading for class. Of course, I would never think about using Wikipedia as a serious source for an academic paper or project, strictly because it exists as a database of information that can be edited by anyone. I sure don't trust Average Joe to give me the purest, most accurate information on anything that matters, but when it comes down to it I have some faith that the people who spend time adding information to Wiki articles are doing so because they are actually interested and knowledgeable on the subjects they take on.

I was (naturally) a bit skeptical of Wales' claim about "collaborative campus parties devoted to making thousands of quality improvements to young articles in one night". I mean, come on. Like college students don't have anything better to do than to sit around editing Wikipedia articles on a Saturday night? Get real. For me, one of the upsides to using Wikipedia is that I don't have to supply any information in order to make use of what others have contributed. I know, I know, I'm terribly lazy, but aren't so many of us? What would we have to do if there were no high-speed internet and Wikipedia to turn to when we have a brain fart? Well, we'd have to physically go to the library and seek out one of those thick, outdated encyclopedias in order to get the info we wanted. (What's a library, you ask? It's this wonderful place filled with books...) There's just something a bit too idealistic about Wales' description of how great Wikipedia is, but I hardly think that it is eroding our intellect. I prefer to think of it as enhancing.

Media Project

Here's a link to my Cheap Eats website:

http://supagrl1211.googlepages.com/eatforcheap

Community Standards

One community that I still consider myself a part of is that of Sidwell Friends School, where I went to high school. Sidwell is a Quaker school located in NW Washington, DC (with a lower school in Bethesda, MD). I only went there for four years, and despite the fact that I initially was unhappy about going there, during that time I found myself developing a strong affinity for the community that exists there. I guess one reason that I still see myself as a part of that community is because the school tries to keep its alumni involved in events long after they graduate. I have already been back to Homecoming at Sidwell three times since I graduated, usually with a friend from my graduating class, and mostly in order to see teachers and classmates that I normally wouldn't see.

The values that are important within the Sidwell community are essentially Quaker values. At Sidwell, each and every person is accepted and encouraged to embrace their uniqueness. Kindness and respect towards others are highly valued. These values are upheld, not only by the school administration, faculty, and staff, but also by the students as well as alumni. Meeting for Worship is a time that Quakers come together once a week to sit together in silence and contemplate whatever it is might be on their minds. Meeting is a time when anyone can stand and speak to the group, or maybe even pose a query, without fear of being judged. While I was still a student at Sidwell, I never noticed the fact that it is its own little bubble removed from the outside world. After graduating, I realized that everything in my life revolved around Sidwell while I was there. I would wake up at 6 am every morning in order to take the Metro and bus to school, after school I always had sports, and on the weekends I would have practice and get together with friends from school.

As a community, I think we were strengthened even more at the beginning of my senior year in high school when a classmate and friend of mine, Tyler Rusch, was killed in a car accident on his way home two nights before the school year started. On that Sunday before Opening Day, my classmates and I had been planning on coming to school and decorating as most senior classes did before the new year started. Instead, as word spread around about the terrible tragedy that had happened, we all just showed up at school anyway, not to decorate, but to gather together in an impromptu Meeting for Worship with parents and students alike. We had gathered out of sorrow and a need to address what had happened; not knowing what else to do we just gravitated towards Sidwell, the community that we all shared. This was probably the day that I knew I would never really stop being a part of the Sidwell community, because if this feeling of togetherness we all felt, even during something we all wished hadn't happened. I guess it sounds a bit weird that something like the untimely death of one of my friends and classmates is what brought the Sidwell Class of 2004 together for life, but it's true. Whenever everyone is home, we all get together and it almost seems as if no time has gone by. We all have a bond between ourselves and our school that can never be broken.

Riff on Opening Lines

I picked up a book I have been meaning to read for a few months, Requiem For A Dream (incidentally I have also been meaning to see the movie for a few years now), and opened it to a random page (page 157 in case you were curious), which just so happened to be the beginning of a new chapter. Here's what I saw:


"The honeymoon was over."


It had only been four days since they'd run out of the chapel together, hand in hand, the two of them against the world, and already they were on the run. So what if they had eloped to Vegas without so much as even leaving a note for their parents or friends; they were married now and could be together no matter what anyone thought. After their wedding ceremony, as they stood beneath the lights, gulping down the cool night air, he had flagged down a taxi and ushered her quickly inside.


"Airport, please."


And just like that, hours later they were on the beach in Hawaii, soaking up the sun like it was going out of style. She couldn't believe how fast everything was happening. It was almost too easy to get caught up in his spontaneous, fast-paced way of living. She had never met anyone who would get as excited as she did about travelling to new and exciting places just for the sake of exploring them. It was exilarating, but at the same time frightening how intense he could be about everything. It had never occured to her that their rushing around and keeping on the move was because of something more.


Four days into their honeymoon, and she was frantically packing while he made arrangements for them to get to Mexico by the next day. How could she have been so naive? How could she have not noticed the late-night phone calls and his muffled voice coming from the next room? The way he tensed up whenever they would pass a police cruiser on the street. She'd thought that maybe he'd had a run-in with the cops during his teen years or something like that, never that he'd actually been on the run. It had taken her five long years to find the man she wanted to marry, and in five minutes he had turned into a wanted criminal, the prime suspect in a bank robbery from before they'd even met.

Part-time consumer

I can't really consider myself to be a full-fledged consumer at this point in my life, mostly because I don't have a job presently. Despite that minor detail, I still manage to spend money on various things when I get the chance, namely gas, food, cigarettes, books, and entertainment-related activities. Being a smoker has definitely had a horribly negative effect on my spending habits, especially with the increase in prices as of the new year. This will probably sound really bad, but since I just turned 21 this past December, I have recently been spending a good deal of money on alcohol and alcohol-related things. Going out to bars can be expensive, especially if the trip involves cab fare to and from the bar. I think that my willingness to spend money at the bars shows the part of my personality that is fun-loving. I like to have a good time and socialize with friends, and being legal (finally) has meant that a lot of that socializing has moved to the bar scene. As sad as it is, one of my priorities during college (aside from doing well in my classes, of course) is to have as much fun as possible before I have to face the real world. What can I say? I love to have a good time.

In the future, I would like to see myself spending money on things like home decor and travel. As a college student, there are certain things that I am less concerned with because where I live is constantly transitioning. When purchasing decorative items for my room, I gravitate towards the less expensive because I know that later on in my life I will be able to replace these things with items I like and not worry about the price. For example, the comforter I currently own is from Ikea, my sheets are jersey from Linens and Things, and my desk lamp is from Target. If it were up to me, I'd be shopping at Pottery Barn or somewhere similar. Well, okay, so maybe I would still frequent Ikea, but I would buy tons more than I can afford to now. I really enjoy visiting places I have never been before, as well as visiting friends that live across the country, but it's something I cannot afford to do presently. After college, I see myself spending a good deal of money on plane tickets to various places where I know people - Oregon, Wisconsin, New Orleans, and places I have always wanted to go like Australia (can't get enough of that accent!), New Zealand (I need to go Zorbing), Amsterdam (do I really need to explain this one?), Alaska (I have to see the Northern Lights before I die), Spain, etc. Until then, looking at pictures of far-off places will have to suffice.

I'm easily entertained by mindless online games

I spend a good deal of time online every day, whether it be checking my UMBC e-mail, using Blackboard, checking Facebook, or just surfing the web for something interesting. I also tend to gravitate towards online games because they're free. One of the websites I visit frequently is addictinggames.com, mainly when I have downtime or just need a break from doing schoolwork. The site features a massive amount of user-created games which are submitted and then posted, as well games hosted by other websites such as shockwave.com (which coincidentally is also owned by the same company, Atom Entertainment, along with AtomFilms.com and AtomUploads.com) and miniclip.com. I think the main reason addictinggames has attracted me as a participant is because it's free and they add more games every Friday so there is constantly something new to check out every time I visit the site.

Last semester in Professor Snyder's MCS 222 class we had a guest speaker named Joel Breton come talk to us whose job happens to be working on addictinggames.com. I learned that MTV had recently bought Atom Entertainment for a whopping $200 million, but continues to limit the number of advertisements and does not feature any ads specifically for MTV. The types of ads you can find on addictinggames are ads for Shockwave games (some are free, some you have to purchase to play), Comcast, Disney-related ads, and a large amount of ads for the social networking site Habbo, as well as the virtual pet site known as Neopets. For the most part, these ads seem to be directed at tweens to teens who probably spend a lot of time playing online games. Habbo specifically labels itself as an online hangout for teens. I think the prevalence of websites such as these shows how often we turn to the internet for entertainment and to socialize with others rather than the real world. When you are chatting with someone on a social networking website, you really have no idea who that other person is and it becomes a very impersonal way of socializing. I also think that by advertising to the younger generation means that teens will pressure their parents to buy them the games they can't play for free online.