Marshall McCullen

In the movie that we viewed Tuesday April 14th about Marshall McCullen stated four main questions. The first question stated; what will this thing enhance? When I heard this it made me think about everything as individuals. Letters, numbers, and multiple other things are all seperate beings until combined with other letters or numbers. All twenty-six letters of the alphabet are singular until they are combined with another letter. Multiple, seperate letters, combine to make words. Words combine to make sentences. Sentences combine to write papers, essays, and stories. If you are trying to make numbers higher than 9 you need to combine seperate numbers to do so. The second question was what will this tool obsolesce. When you think obsolesce you throw away your actual way of thinking. You do away with the days and nights of a 24 hour system and think literal. If a light is on then it is day and if there are no lights it is night time. The third question is what will this tool retrieve? After the movie stated this question it stated that, "it is so hard for a man to look into the future because it scares him." What is unknown is not certain and that scares the humans that make the world. The movie also stated that electic media is a big part of question three. Electric media allows the whole world to know information from all over the globe. (Earthquakes, war, economy, gas, etc.) The fourth, and final, question is how will your tool reverse on you when it's pushed to its outer limit? When I heard this question I thought of a car. When a car is pushed to its outer limit, especially in speed, it begins to shake and parts begin to break or disessemble themselves. Another thing that the movie stressed, reguarding question four, is that too much of anything sweet will bring the opposite outcome of what you expected, and that "pushed far enough one become many and many become one."

Pull Yourself Up by Your Own Bootstraps

We were in class a few weeks back and I really got into the class lecture that day. We were talking about the six myths, but particularly about the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps one. Professor Rudd asked us to think of examples of each of the six myths and afterwards he called on us to share with the class. After each group gave their example it was time for the last group to speak. The group that was speaking chose to tell their example of the Kirk Gibson homerun from the 1988 world series. Their story consisted of the setting being the 1988 Game 1 of the world series at the Dodgers' park. It was the bottom of the ninth and the count was full. The Dodgers were behind in the game 3-2 and their was a man on first base when Kirk Gibson stepped up to the plate. Kirk had been injured to the point where during the introduction he didn't even come out on the field when they called his name. But when the game was on the line Gibson took to the batter's box and gave it his all. With the count knotted up at 3-2 he took one final swing and parked the ball over the right field fence and shocked the crowd. After rounding second base he gave one of the most memorable to fist pumps I've ever seen. This example that they gave was perfect for me in illustrating what it meant to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. One man was injured quite badly, but when he was called upon he overcame the adversity of his injury and perservered through his injury to suceed. Rudd agreed with their example and called it excellent. Simply Excellent.

Signs in a Song

During class we broke down the song I'm Yours by Jason Mraz and we pointed out a bunch of signs in the song. This intrigued me and I decided to do the same thing with the new Britney Spears song If You Seek Amy. Without even reading into the lyrics there is a sign. The title of the song is a sign: if you seek Amy. If one were to read the title slowly it spells out F-*-C-K-M-E. Upon listening to the song and reading the lyrics at the same time I found that the lyrics before the chorus make no sense. The chorus says, "Love me hate me, Say what you want about me, But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging, To If You Seek Amy."If you were to read the whole chorus at a regular pace you'd never be able to catch it. Also if you read it straight through it doesn't make any sense. All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy makes no sense and would not be classified as a correct sentence in English class. Knowing Britney Spears and her past I figure that she purposly wrote the lyrics to this song to make this "glitch" happen. Britney Spears hasn't had the greatest and most upstanding history and this song just goes to show you that she still has the sexual thoughts that got her in trouble with K. Fed. The chorus technically says one thing, but upon listening to the song and reading into it one can tell that Britney Spears really means something totally different.

Formative Media Text

The one media that has affected me the most is television. And one story on the news in the year 2000 is what affected me even more than television itself. I was ten years old and currently sitting in math class next to my best friend Eddie Barth when I heard the news. A plane has crashed into the world trade center. At that point in time the second plane had not yet hit the other building and it was uncertain if it was a terrorist attack or crash landing gone bad. My math teacher stopped the class and told us to pay attention because this would affect and alter our world as we knew it to be. Sitting there that day I thought to myself how will this affect me? Well today, nine years later, I realize that 9/11 affected me in more than one way. I feel that on that date I learned what patriotism was all about. I learned that terrorism was real and could happen to anyone at any time. The world that we live in is a scary one and we have to count our blessings daily. My father was supposed to be on a plane to come home on September 11th, but it was cancelled due to that day's events. I can remember being scared out of my mind because I didn't want my father's plane to be like the ones I had seen on television.

Media Log

On a normal day I tend to consume approximatly two hours of media. The media that I consume tends to vary from school textbooks to television to the school newspaper (Aviso). The reason that I view television is mostly to watch, or catch up on, sports. For example my favorite college basketball team in the University of North Carolina Tarheels. UNC played last night against the Duke Blue Devils, their arch rival, and I viewd the game in its entirety. Besides watching live sporting feeds I also enjoy watching Sports Center to catch up on what happened after I went to bed or what happened prior in the day. Besides watching sports on television the only other type of media that I seem to absorb is text from school textbooks. Each of my classes this semester requires a different, but ample, amount of time for reading the textbook. If you don't do the required readings you will be lost in class and I can't afford that.
The one thing that surprised me after viewing my media log was that I don't consume as much media as I thought. One of the main reasons that I don't obtain as much media anymore is because I play baseball. With practice added on top of my current work load it doesn't leave much extra time to watch much media.

Possibilities and Problems

In regards to mass media and society there can be multiple problems and possibilities. When massive amounts of media are being produced to entire countries problems can easily arise. If some fact of the media is inaccurate or incomplete it could lead to many problems within the nation. I have heard of newspapers printing obituaries in the paper for people who are currently still living. If you are sitting in a hospital bed, in bad condition, and you read or hear about your own obituary being in the paper do you think that will help or hurt your outlook on survival?
One possibility in mass media and society is being able to project future national events and educate people on them. If a nation knew when a tornado was going to hit or when there was going to be a fire we could take precautions and measure to ensure safety. The house where the fire is going to take place in will be evacuated. The location of where the tornado is supposed to hit will be prepared and boarded up.
The world needs its forms of media and with out them its citizens would be lost. The problems and possibilities level out to make it even. Mass media directly affects its society by informing them on news, events, sports, and anything else anyone could ever ask for.

Kirk's Big Blast

The year is 1988 and the event is the world series. The game featured the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Oakland Athletics. Dodger's big time player, and the National League's player of the year, Kirk Gibson was on the bench with an injury from the previous series against the New York Mets.
In the first game, of the seven game series, the Dodgers trailed 4-3 in the final inning of the game. With Mike Davis on first base head coach Tommy Lasorda called for Gibson to pinch hit for the intended batter. Earlier when he received the news that he'd be pinch hitting Kirk went to the team batting practice area to take a few swings. The rumor has it that he had so much pain in his knee that he winced and nearly collapsed after every swing.
With the stage set and the Dodgers down one in the ninth inning Gibson grabbed a bat and took the field. If his knee wasn't enough adversity to overcome he had to face pitcher Dennis Eckersley who was said to be a top closer in the majors. After battling through a few pitches the count ended up three balls and two strikes. Ignoring all the pain inside his body Kirk exploded on a back door slider and sent it sailing over the fence for a homerun. The Dodgers won game on 5-4 in nine innings, and that was the only at bat of the entire series for Kirk Gibson.