Final Project

I think the biggest obstacle during my final project will be compiling all the information I receive from the interviews into a concise and understandable paper. I’m sure I will have more information than will be used in the paper so that is also a challenge to pick and choose what I want to use.

I have a pretty good understanding of what needs to be done for the essay, so I really don’t have any questions. The only thing I was worried about was my topic because I didn’t know if that’s what you were looking for but after receiving the first part of the project, I’m not worried about that anymore.

Something in Class

1. The point we often get to is that we all show ourselves differently to people and situations. Getting to the core is what often needs to happen and the article really focuses on getting to that point. Like the Norwegian saying that no one really cares about what he has to say and that he wont care what those people think. People unconsciously lie like Morris said.
2. Why should he answer questions that others have about him and why do they even care. There is no reason that it should even matter to anyone. Why would anyone care.
3. People just have a natural or innate curiosity to find things out and to seek out new information about people.
4. No we cant trust interviewees, even if they have the best intentions, they may be having self deception and editing what they are saying to make themselves look better subconsciously. In theory you should be able to ask questions to yourself and get different answers every time and from different people.
5. It makes sense, no one who is being interviewed will ever really be entirely honest and open themselves to attack. Thus, what they say isn't really factual or useful. And secondly, people who read interviews are therefore not really all that real or useful. Its no substitute for spending time with them and actually getting to know them.

Something instead of nothing

I really enjoyed reading “Something Instead of Nothing” because it made think about things that have never really crossed my mind. For example, why should people answer any of the questions I’m asking? Or what makes the interviewee want to keep talking to me? All the questions that the interview with the Norwegian journalist brought up were all valid to me. Realizing that the stuff you’re answering doesn’t even matter to you at all, or possibly even the people in Norway, doesn’t seem like it would give you much of an incentive to do interviews like that.

I really enjoyed Errol Morris’ thoughts on interviews as well. I can see exactly what he is saying when he says he feels he knows the interviewer more than himself at the end of an interview. And while what he said about someone who doesn’t talk a lot is harder to trust is a little harsh in my opinion, I still think that someone who talks more can leave a better impression of themselves on someone.

Simpsons/Coolhunters

Both the article and the show demonstrate that cool is being sold to you. In the Simpson's episode, the festival that Homer went to had ads and flyers everywhere showcasing the "cool" things.

Also, in the article he talked about how you can't really force trying to be cool, and in the Simpson's episode, that was exactly what Homer was doing with the cannon.Cool can't also just be "explained", for example how Homer just stumbled onto being hit by the cannon.

Gladwell also mentioned in his article how it's the cool people that decide what is cool and that was reflected in the Simpson's episode well with the Smashing Pumpkins, Cypress Hill, etc.

Power Point

It seems to me like Tufte has a personal vendetta against Power Point. Some of his reasons for disliking Power Point come off as petty. For example, he talks about how in school they are teaching kids to write just a total of about 80 words for a presentation. He fails to mention the purpose of these presentations is to provide the main gist of the speaker’s point and then have the speaker go into further detail and not just read off the slides he or she has prepared.

Another thing that I thought was off about Tufte’s reasoning was his hate for the presentation of data in Power Point. From what he described about the cancer patient example seemed more like a user error then a program error. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not fully behind Power Point, but I feel that Tufte’s reasons don’t make an appealing argument.

Cool

Determining what is cool or what makes something cool is a difficult thing. Trends come and go so often that you can never really tell where the source of the fad is from. A good example of a fad that came and went really fast was Silly bands. My roommates and I were talking about this the other day. Silly Bands were popular for ONE summer pretty much. It is amazing looking back the past year at how the popularity of some things can spread so rapidly. What started the fad? The media or some small group of kids who started using them and it just caught on? Who knows?

On the other side of things, what makes things not cool anymore? What makes that pair of shoes or shirt you bought a year or two ago not fit in anymore? I guess it could be the over exposure of a certain thing to a group of people can make it not cool anymore or seem played out. Mostly though, I think that the upper class, or popular groups of people decide indirectly what “cool” is.

Google Stupid Questions

1. Carr says his mind is changing by the way he gathers information. He used to be able to read articles in depth and want to investigate and find out more about the subject. Now he finds himself having a hard time reading more than a few paragraphs without losing his concentration.


2. He says that researching through the internet is obviously much faster than researching through a library. What was once done in days and weeks can now be done in hours.


3. Carr talks about one his proffessors that once was an avid reader who now does all his readings through the internet. Another example is the author who switched from writing with a pen to with a typewriter. After switching it was apparent that this author's writing style significantly changed.


4. We think that Carr is worried that we will rely on Google too much and that it will do all the thinking for us. He fears that eventually we will lose our original thoughts.

Google

After reading Carr’s article about Google, I have two opinions. The first thing is that I agree that I sometimes have trouble reading articles that are of a significantly longer length, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the resources available to me on the internet. The other thing is that I feel Google has had the opposite effect on me than Carr is saying in his article. For me and for some of my friends that I have asked, feel that Google hadn’t made us dumber but we learnt things from Google. The easy access allows us to instantly find something out we were wondering instead of having to go somewhere, take out a book and scour the book for the info that were looking for. Carr came off like someone who just misses the way things used to be.

Billy Sim - Group Questions

1. We thought that it was interesting that people in real life would like to view themselves from a different point of view and sort of live their lives through a computer. Its also interesting to see how Chuck, in reality, was someone who didnt value many material things and when he created his Sim Chuck he strived to be very rich and materialistic, therefore his real life identity was different from his simulated one.

2. We connected Klosterman's piece to the vanishing story. Like the man who tried to change his identity and lead a new life, it corresponds to the concept of the Sims game by creating a new identity and living your life in a different way.

3. We don't agree that the statement about children thinking like computers is true. Unlike being cold and rational like computers, humans still and will always have emotions and humans still act upon those emotions.

Billy Sim

The whole time, up until Klosterman spoke with Will Wright, I was frustrated reading what he had to say about video gaming and The Sims. His thought process that The Sims boiled down to materialism just aggravated me. It seemed like he was thinking into the game way harder than was necessary. This seems to be a constant with a lot of people that dislike the ideas of videogames. I remember there was lawyer in Florida named Jack Thompson who kept going at a certain game company and ended up getting disbarred because of his work. Video games are just an easy target for these types of people.

That wasn’t the only thing that bothered me about this article. Klosterman didn’t even explore the other ideas possible, he immediately assumed the worst. It took calling the creator of the game and complaining for him to open his mind to the other possibilities.

Final Draft

When I hear final draft, what comes to my mind is a complete finished piece of work. In my opinion, I don't think there is a final draft to who we are. I know i have changed plenty of times during my life, and I'm sure other people have too. I just don't think that anyone can just be "done" and be the same for his or her entire life. If that was the case, everybody would be so dull and boring and go through the daily routines of their monotonous life.

Slumming

After reading this article, I found myself enjoying it because it was different from what we usually read. The article was about these two rich people who decided to become homeless just for the hell of it. At first they were enjoying their life as homeless people until one night when they witness the kidnapping of a Brazilian oil heiress. They end up not calling it in because they didn’t see any faces or the license plate but the girl was still on their mind. After this incident, Mrs. Keyes decides she is going to remove all contact from the outside world. She gets rid of her TV, recycles her newspaper without reading it, etc. basically so she doesn’t have to read about all the terrible things going on in the world.

Now, even though I enjoyed the article, certain aspects of it kind of pissed me off. The whole “trendy” thing to do is the worst. Reading about these bourgeoisie types of people just deciding to be homeless is a very aggravating thing to me when there are so many actually homeless people who could benefit from these people. And I feel that was the author’s intention to the whole story. Or maybe not and I just over-analyzed the whole article.

Vanish

After I finished reading Evan Ratliff’s account of his vanishing from society, I was intrigued. At first did not think there was any way in hell that he could vanish without anyone figuring out where he was or what he was doing. After changing his appearance and literally being able to go anywhere in the U.S., I couldn’t possibly think of a way people could find him. But as I kept reading, I was amazed by not only the technology people were using to find Evan, but the massive amount of people trying to find him. I got the same feeling I did when I was reading the article earlier in the year about Freyer selling all of his things, in that I was surprised at the way people could work together and get along. There were a bunch of different talents working together, from the high school hacker to the Microsoft employee who ended up finding out the twitter account that Evan was using during the end of the hunt.

Another thing I thought of while reading this was how cool it would have been to be able to do this. I know that Ratliff said he was constantly feeling paranoid, but I feel that there has to be some kind of rush that goes along with it. This can work on the other side of the coin too. I wish I had the resources to be able to track down Evan like the people who were chasing him did.

Do I call myself a writer?

A writer is defined as someone who produces literary content. I’m not sure if I would call myself a writer or not. It’s a very broad term that could be applied to many things. On one side you could call yourself a writer for having a blog or just even writing a paper for your class. On the other hand some people could call themselves when they’re occupation involves writing such as a reporter or an author.

In my opinion however, I think that is fair to call yourself a writer even if you’re job doesn’t revolve around it. I’d consider myself a writer because I have contributed to blogs and have written short stories and such before.

Why Write?

As I said in my blog post about Joan Didion’s reason for her writing, I can agree with her reason which is to sway the reader’s opinion towards your own, to change their mind. You want to have what you’re writing provoke some thought out of your readers.

Another reason to write would be to get out onto paper what you can’t say in person. Writing can be a great way to express yourself and your ideas. From writing a novel, a short story, a thesis or even a poem can be a great way of expressing yourself. I know that I can express myself in writing better than just having a conversation and I’m sure there are a lot of people who are the same way as me.

Why I Write

In our reading selection this week, Joan Didion talks about why she writes. I like how, at the beginning of her essay, she says that writing is almost a hostile act, telling people to listen to you and change their mind to see it my way. I thought that was a very good explanation of the purpose of writing something. Subconsciously, I’ve found myself doing this exact thing; trying to sway the reader to my side.

Another thing that caught my attention was what she wrote at the very end of her essay. Didion said that as she was writing her novel, she asked herself, who is the narrator? Who is victor? Why is the narrator telling me this story? And the conclusion that she came to was that she didn’t know. That was her reason for writing the novel. She said that if she had known the answer to all these questions, she would have no need to write the novel. I can relate to this as well. I have wrote some short stories in my spare time just for fun and what Didion says rings true: not knowing what is coming next for your story or the characters is the best part about writing.

Obama speech edits

As a group we noticed that a lot of Obama's edits added a mixture of emotion and accountability to his speech through the edits. He often tried to convey to the audience that his statements were not broad generalizations, that they were from real people with feelings. Obama made many attempts to unify American belief on politics, that no matter which party one is from, everyone can agree to values such as good will. On top of this, Obama tacks on his own political agenda to these 'unifying' statements. For example, adding on "that only government can ensure" to an example of something that everyone stands for.

A & P Questions

1.)We think that the ending of the story kind of sucked for Sammy. he ended up not catching the girl's attention and subsequently did not have a job. The end of the story was both liberating and frustrating because you put yourself out there and get shot down by the girls and don't have a job.

2.) We disagree with Porter, because Sammy put himself out there honestly and got nothing out of it.

3.)Sammy changed his own identity from being a reserved person but then came out and spoke up in front of the girls.

4.) The purpose of the details in the story is to bring meaning to Sammy's decisions in the story. If there were not any details we would question the decision making of Sammy. On the other hand, he might not have wanted to end up like his friend who was 22 and was already married and had kids.

5.)If we were Sammy, we wouldn't have made the same decision because it was a such a small thing for him to quit his job and be left out in dust.

A & P

I really liked this selection written by John Updike. I feel that so many people can relate to it regardless if you worked in a grocery store or some other type of retail. I know I’ve been in this position plenty of times just walking around campus or sitting down to eat somewhere. You feel like just by seeing someone you can figure out they’re personality or motives.

Another thing that I really liked about this selection was when he quit his job. The feeling of “coolness” he feels right when he quits is so quickly wiped away when the girls just kept walking out of the store. This is another thing that I feel a lot of people can compare to as well. There have been times when I at first thought that a decision I was about to make was going to be great, but then quickly regretted soon thereafter. Coming up with a joke in your head that you think will be great but turns out to be either horribly awkward or just plain old unfunny is a perfect example of this situation.

Half-Empty Mouth Wash

1. One possibility is a person who mistook it for an unopened bottle. Or, a person with low income and bad oral hygiene. Possibly a person just looking to help him out, or to do it for the thrill. Then again, it could have been an underage alcoholic.

2. It probably sold because people wanted to help him out. People may have bought it to brag that they have an item of this mans life.