Rethinking Ethics

The fact that one group of people can change a world view on how a person should look says something. People can change the world. Normally, I'd like to believe, many people go by the phrase "be the change you wish to see in the world" I can only wonder if that's what people have done. If the world really wants to see women and men alike objectified, well, they succeeded. It's disgusting. I don't really know what else there is to say on it. People have power, unless you let it get taken away from you.

Identifying with Identity

Every time I take a new look at Dr. Seuss I fall even more in love. While rethinking identity it's difficult for me not to attach Yertle the Turtle to the identity of the United States of America. Yertle is a turtle who is anything but nice.  He deems himself king of kings and rules with a grip like a vice. This cartoon is a political commentary, one of many, that Dr. Seuss has made. Even in the modern era America is still following imperialistic ideals that we claim to fight against. While we may have 50 states we have many territories that we claim.

As Americans I really don't think we know who we are, this last video was a glimpse of what it means to be an American. We see cultural turns towards sex, fantasy, ignorance, laziness, selfishness and consumer production/consumption, little do we see the fight for freedom. Not to say that we don't value our freedoms, today we fight for the right to smoke cannabis, to keep religion from overwhelming political endeavors, to be able to marry who we love, but we don't stand up to our own country when it comes to taking over other cultures.
For a large portion of my life I have lived in Wisconsin, which has a member of the United States for over 100 years. We are known as the drinkers, the cheese heads and the foot ball freaks. This is just our culture, it's accepted and when people come to visit they must see some of this "culture". The documentary we watched on the annexation of Hawaii shows me even more so that the American culture that prides its' self on being a mut, is hypocritical. The native Hawaiian culture is all but snuffed out, leading to the appropriate name of "Then There Were None". To be quite honest, I wish we could give Hawaii back to its people. I really do.

Copyright or Copywrong?

The definition of copyright does not include what the action of the word implies. The most common one I'm sure we are all familiar with is Literature copyright issues. As students we have to sign anti-plagarism contracts in school to assure the teacher we will not copy someone elses work and pass it off as our own. However, if we are giving credit to the original author we can quote half the book if we wished too.
One new form of "copyright" and art that is making its break into the music scene is dubstep. Dubstep is slowed down drum and bass music that often samples other songs and plays around with beats and other lyrics to make the song funny, deep or any other emotion you can think of. The fact of the matter is many dj's are having a hard time getting their work out there and, even more difficult, getting paid.
People love good music, that's why people have written songs, covered songs and are now remixing them. It's all about experimentation. Remixing is the next step up from covering a song. No cover is a good cover unless it has it's own twist along with all the good stuff. Just like a remix isn't a remix unless it's got its own message, its own feel and its own followers. The question I raise to you now is one I really would like an answer to if you can...
So why can't an artist sample another artist (if due credit is given) but an author can "sample" an author as long as they have all the parenthesis and accreditation in the back of the book. Also, the author can still get paid. This just leads me to believe that suits have taken over the music industry. Music is now a commodity, not a talent to suits, but a profit to be made. Many of the artist's we saw in the video touched on this subject. It makes me sick. I'm not even gonna go into the radio portion of how business is corrupt or else this blog would be a virtual mile long. If you guys have any good remixes I should listen to please post them! Here are some for you :D


Also here is an artist you should check out if you have time, all of his music is free for download off of his website.

GIRL TALK :
- http://illegal-art.net/allday/ Barletta - Panther remix by Zed's Dead : http://youtu.be/dOAR9zT4i-8

A New Look on Love

We are generation 2.0. We have evolved as a society to embrace self-induced exile with a hint of social interaction. This statement might seem a little odd, maybe it sounds best in my head. What I mean by "self-induced exile" is that some people would rather not have to interact with people face to face. Instead they choose to interact online, behind aliases and a computer screen. The abundance of aliases is why I say "exile with a hint of social interaction." there may be interactions that happen online, but how many are genuine? How many are real?

People flock to online social sites to connect. eHarmony.com, myYearbook.com, vampirefreaks.com,and even Facebook are common sights where superficial interactions are taken as genuine every day. Fake profiles are a common danger/anomaly on the internet. Sex predetors, angsty teens and lonely people create fake profiles for a number of reasons.

Fake "Facebooking"/"myspacing":
I'm sure that most of us have seen fake profiles of people. This was HUGE when I had a myspace account. I can't even tell you how many times I would see a fake profile of my friend Spanks, (Niel) almost once a week. He was extremly attractive. Piercings, crazy original hair/hair colors and an amazing personality. These people who would make the fake profiles would act like a man-whore online, unfortunately people bought into it. There really is no way to tell unless someone calls that person out or if you know the person they are trying to impersonate. People who made these profiles found a way to enact who they wanted to be, but obviously were to scared to be in real life. To me, that's just sad. What might be even worse is people I knew from Highschool would take my friend Niel's picture and say he was their boyfriend!
This is Niel aka Spanks. His photos are all over photo bucket under "hot emo boy" along with many others. Granted this photo is really old, it still proves my point. People live out fantasies online. Some are just more dangerous to mental health than others. By the way, if you've seen this fake profile or even just this picture around let me know in a comment, I'm really curious to see if anyone has.

W.O.W. That's Lame:
W.O.W. (World of Warcraft) is one of the largest online/social gaming experiences that is on the market today, also one of the oldest. When I think of this game, I don't think of it as an opportunity to meet my husband or anything of the like; not that I play. Seeing the documentary really shocked me...if only for the reason that I never realized how into the game people get! I mean come on, it's a character, how do you know who you are getting to know? Those individuals who are very into the game see it as a place to meet others like themselves and do things as a group. These gaming sights even have fraternity like groups called guilds. It just amazes me how people find ways to make relationships these days.

America v.s. Korea:
The final thing that this documentary made me question was the way American society looks at online gaming/online relationships compared to the rest of the world. I'll focus on two examples, China and Korea.

The documentary talks about the Chinese gold farmers briefly. It also talks about the discrimination they receive from other players. Personally I think they are just jealous that these kids get paid to do that, and the gamers who dislike them have to pay to play!

What shocked me more than the blatant discrimination among this group was the lack of coverage of the anti-gaming addiction camps! Kids have died in these camps located in Korea (and maybe other places) First, here is an excerpt from an American program:

"DETOX – VIDEO GAME ADDICTION
As strange as it may seem, there is a Detox process for video game addiction. Tihs behavior is a clinical impulse control disorder, identical to gambling addiction. The Detox process commonly occurs in a residential addiction treatment center...As the removal of the source of addiction occurs, other psychological issues are examined in order that an individual treatment plan can be created and clinical therapeutic approaches can begin. Often, patients or clients are “self-medicating” or seeking a feel-good feeling in response to life stressors, anxiety, depression, trauma, or other catalysts for the need to feel good. The need to “feel good” increases and the source (video gaming) of the feeling becomes addictive, resulting in daily life responsibilities and relationships, suffering and eventually making daily life functions nearly impossible."

NOW here are exerpts from articles photos from Korean anti-addiction camps:

"South Korean psychiatrists claim that they have successfully treated game addiction with an antidepressant drug called Bupropion. The study was conducted by psychiatrist from the Department of Psychiatry at Chung Ang University - College of Medicine, used 11 participants that were "diagnosed" as having "Internet Game Addiction" because they played "StarCraft for 4 or more hours a day." Six of the eleven participants had skipped school for two months, while two of the participants had been divorced due to their addiction to StarCraft.

The entire group was treated with the antidepressant for six weeks. After the trial period, researchers say that their group’s cravings to play StarCraft apparently decreased by 23.6 percent and total playing time decreased by 35.5 percent. Researchers also conducted MRI scans on all of the subjects and discovered that their brains responded "less strongly" to pictures of Zerglings after taking the drug."

Money For Nothing

Many music listeners despise the "mainstream" music for one reason or another. Some for the simple fact that the artist doesn't fit their taste, others for the simple fact of how commercial and over produced the mainstream music is. It's one thing for a band to make it big and be known around the country on their merit, its another monster completely when they are popular because the producing companies paid for them to get big. It's like selling your soul in my opinion. Money for nothing really touches on these themes. This documentary is haunting. Not in the "Paranormal Activity" kind of haunting, with bad camera angles, poor quality and content, but in the sense that these things happen under the radar. It seems like you might need a group of "ghost hunters" just to pick up on some of the day to day activities in the music industry. This movie really drives home what the band, System of a Down, was trying to accomplish with their cd entitled "Steal This Album". Artists make about $1.00 per album, and while some albums sell millions of copies, at 12 to 20 dollars an album it makes me wonder who sets the prices. Obviously some people get paid to design the album, people get paid to promote it, people (many of them) get paid to produce/be in/design/crew the music videos, but can this really eat up all the money? Or does someone end up lining their wallets more than they should? I would only assume the producers are possibly making more than most of the artists they sign. What this film made me think of most, the question it sparked, is how do we change this? Can this system be beat?

And now a word from our predecessors...

Mary-lou Snowden
Born in 1917
Long Island, NY.
Phone interview


What was your main form of getting information when you were living on your own?

“News papers, the radio and word of mouth. I used to get the Wall Street Journal. They had very interesting articles. ”

What about when you were a kid, what kind of media sticks out in your memory still?

“When we were children we listened to Jack Armstrong, Orphan Annie and a few other radio programs. We would listen to the radio every after noon. There was a media (news) station in Chicago I listened to a lot. PBS, I think, was the name of the station.

My mother was fond of television. She would watch the political campaigns and what not, things going on in congress and such. I never watched it with her because I was working and doing other things I was interested in when I wasn’t working. Sometimes I would watch the programs in the evening of reviews like the Ed Sullivan Show. I never watched the soaps, but those were on TV after radio became a secondary media.

Your mother and your aunt grew up watching the television. They couldn’t imagine life without television. My daughters asked if Grandpa and I used to watch television by candle light because they understood ELECTRICITY wasn’t always around, but they didn’t understand that TV came after electricity. They watched many children’s programs. Susan would watch the ads for Speedy Alka-Seltzer because she liked the character Peety”

What did you notice about ads on television versus radio?

“The ads became much more prominent and pushy with the shift from radio to television. TV shows would be on for 2 minutes and stop for an ad and it just got me so annoyed.”

What would be advertised on television? Were colleges and books advertised like they are now?
They advertised books. Not colleges except for a few colleges that had masters degrees programs you would write away for. Movie stars were on different programs often as guests and they would advertise movies, kind of like they do now though.


Did movies advertise on television, radio or print media more with the shift from radio to television?

They advertise movies more now than ever. In fact the movie industry was very afraid of television because they thought movies would take a dive to television popularity. Their method of thinking was why go out for a movie if you can have one in your home. Which obviously didn’t prove true. Television is more effective way to advertise for movies in my opinion. You can see what’s going on along with hearing it. I don’t recall any movie advertisements on radio.


Are these still the main forms of how you receive media?

“Now I listen to Fox and CNN on the television mostly. I’ll read the paper when I get the Wall Street Journal, but I don’t use the radio anymore.”

Were there any specific stories or ads that stuck out to you?

“I remember saving an article about a famous media woman. She did a lot of war photos; I recall this because she was a member of my sorority (ten years ahead) at Cornell. She had the first cover of life magazine.”

“They (life magazine) started covering war stories … I didn’t read much about them unless it was important. The invasion of France and the end of the war were the ones I looked into. It was very scary to see the photos and read the articles about the war.
- Marylou went on to say that many of the boys she knew in collage, including my Grandfather, had been drafted or joined up right away. I’d imagine part of the reason she didn’t read more on the war was because of the fear of hearing something had happened to them. Her campus had a P.A. system that would announce things about signing up for the war and any other MAJOR or emergency situational information. (When it wasn’t school club info.)

“I was sitting next to a friend when the announcement went over the PA saying Pearl Harbor was bombed. He later that day joined the war and died… Another was the captain of the Arizona, he would check on the ship every day as it was being built. He was on it the day Pearl Harbor was bombed”

Was school news very seriously taken by the student body? Was it more popular than city news?

“A lot of the boys I knew joined up. It closed many of the frat houses because so many people signed up for the war at one time. I know some of the boys were drafted, I know more of them signed up because they felt obligated or bound to. Quite a few were draft announcements about the war were made on campus but, I don’t recall any propaganda posters or speeches going around campus. I wouldn’t have gone to them anyway if I had known about them.

Did many of the boys you knew sign up before or after much of the propaganda and homeland attacks started?

“Some before, more after, especially after Pearl Harbor and what not. Except for the Jewish fraternities, the Jewish fraternity kept saying that, ‘We didn’t do anything in the war’, when it came down to the fact that their people didn’t want to fight.”

Were many of the women you knew drawn in like the men?

“The women didn’t think much about the war propaganda because they were not being drafted. The Uncle Sam posters were classic signs, but I don’t recall seeing too many of them. I think the girls were reading the news papers, but I don’t think they were really into reading it often or in depth because there wasn’t much going on. There was a little thing in Vietnam and the Gulf.”


When you lived on your own in New York state, do you recall any advertisements that were interesting to you? Have you noticed any dramatic changes in the way that advertising is done in Time Square, for example?

“Well I lived in Ithaca, which is for the most part (and in comparison to New York City) a small city. There was one big department store, and I only went there a few times. Most of my big shopping was done in New York City. Time square had a lot of ads but, not as many as there are now. The content was not nearly pushy either. Central square was not as full of faces advertising products as it is now, nor was it as ‘risky’. I enjoyed looking at the advertisements when I was younger because I love clothes. But I got most of my information on clothes from Vogue magazine, Mademoiselle and Hoppers Bizarre advertisements.