Blogging Around

Josh Tolmatsky - Metacognition: Playlists
Josh talks about how he took the time to categorize his iTunes library into different categories. He said that as time passed it became easier and easier to organize his music, and that after he had finished he felt that it was easier to grasp his collection of music better.
My comment:
I feel your pain- over the summer I went through the same experience. Having upwards of 2200 songs, it was an even more rigorous task. I made playlists based on my personal genres similar to yours, and also a favorites and new music playlist. And since I listen to so many genres of music, the playlists I could've created were endless.

But another thing I did was fix up songs. By this I mean correct the artist, add the correct album artwork, and manipulate music so songs by the same artist would group together (many artists feature other artists and so the artist name doesn't group with the album artist). By doing this I actually learned a lot more about the history and basis of my music. I learned that the name of the album/album artwork tells you a lot about the artist. I've noticed a new trend in designing artwork that draws attention and strikes people as abstract. And since my 5-year collection of music only grew bigger, I owned multiple albums of an artist and was able to draw conclusions on the artists influences and ideals. For example, when looking back on my collection of the rapper Eminem's music, I found that all of his albums related to a stage. The Eminem Show, Curtain Call, Relapse, Encore, and Recovery. And his albums represent what he views as the high and lows of his career, as he named his most recent album Recovery in efforts to Recovery from his Relapse album.

Over the years my taste in music has transitioned, and when I had to go back and fix up songs I was astounded at what I found. Music I would now simply laugh at used to occupy my ipod. When I was younger, a lot of my music came from my dad as he was my only real source for music. Car rides featured classic rock such as Led Zeppelin, Guns N' Roses, The Police, and Sting. I was shocked at how big of a collection of that genre of music I had, as now I rarely listen to that. My next phase was more mainstream/hip-hop, and as I saw my older music I realized all of it was discovered through the radio. After that I found that my taste in music broadened, as things like Pandora and YouTube sprouted. I was able to find more and more music, and really decide what I liked. And of course, as I made new friends in high school my music taste was influenced by them. I think organizing your music is a project necessary to all, as it helps you determine who you really are.

Ryan Bunny - iMedia: Kayaking with Sharks
Ryan shows a picture of a person kayaking alone in the water with a massive shark trailing behind him. He claims that naturally he assumed that if the picture were true, the person would've been dead by now as the shark would've swallowed the kayak whole. After making a second analysis, he realized that this false perception was solely due to the media, and its representation of sharks as "vicious man-eaters".

My comment:
I was thinking the same thing as I saw this picture- "Please. Can you say photoshop?" I enjoyed this blog because I have the same fear. It's an appreciation for shark's almightiness. The funny thing is, I used to watch many shark shows claiming that almost all sharks are completely harmless as long as you don't provoke them, but yet if I did ever encounter a shark I'd be sure to have a stroke. I always wondered WHY I was so afraid of sharks. Your article makes it clear- it's the media. When I think of a shark, I picture my torso being mercilessly ripped in two. I picture me getting a small cut, and leaving a drop of blood that draws a 2-ton man-eater to my falsely-assumed safe-haven known as the beach. I picture a lifeguard monitoring me, but not able to reach me in time. Classic shark movies have made this stereotype part of society, and so I completely agree with your statement that society should concentrate more on scientific truth. Maybe then I would be less afraid of sharks!

Metacognition: Cleaning Up the Garage

Each year the time comes when the garage needs organizing, and at least in my house, summer objects need to be shifted into the garage and 'hibernate' for the winter. My family and I spent about 30-45 minutes moving things around in the garage and bringing backyard items into the garage. The things we brought in from outside included a patio dining table, a portable bonfire pit, and a hammock. Also, our backyard grill had to be covered and wrapped tightly so the cover would not fly away. In the garage, among the plethora of balls, sports equipment, shoes, and bicycles, there were a lot of Halloween decorations that were piled up in the garage but not organized. A multitude of shoes had to be put in their proper place on their racks. And items to donate to the Salvation Army had to be sorted out.

This day was dreaded for a while. In my head, I kept thinking I didn't want to tidy things up because it was cold and I liked the warmth inside my house. Cleaning up the garage required being fully dressed in order to prevent becoming sick.

But as I reflected back on this process, I realized that there was a more subconscious reason as to why I was not looking forward to this event. Dreading the cold translates to dreading the arrival of the winter. The transitioning process can be hard, especially because summer is my favorite time of year, and naturally winter is my least favorite time of the year. It's almost like I don't want to face the harsh cold of the winter, along with the temporary cease of outdoor sports and happiness. And the apex of schoolwork takes place during the winter, right around the end of 2nd semester/beginning of 3rd semester. Also staying uncluttered symbolizes my mind being cleared up and organized, awaiting a rigorous 'winter' of hard learning and swim practice. In order to stay on track during the winter, I have to organize and use my time better to do everything that needs to be done. In the same respect, the garage needs to be organized in order for all materials of the Summer to fit in to the garage with all the Winter objects lurking around.

During the process of cleaning up my garage, I grouped things together by category and the things that would be soonest to come in to use stayed up front and visible while everything else got buried in the back. In a more figurative sense, this represents the cycling of life. Years pass, the days change, and the appearance of my garage changes by the day. If I were to take a picture of my garage all 365 days of the year, I think I would be amazed at how vividly I would be able to remember that moment in the year just by the looks of my garage. The trails of water from the cars may show the snow and the winter. The new golf clubs or shoes may resurface a birthday. After doing this project, I gathered that organizing things such as my garage helps transition my mind between different states.

iMedia: LeBron James- The Decision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdtejCR413c

This Nike commercial that former Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player (now on the Miami Heat) sparked heated controversy when first released. And every time I see this commercial, I realize how much it reflects our culture. LeBron James became a free agent last year, and his "decision" of which team he was going to be on turned into a national press conference. Although this commercial was geared towards the Nike slogan "Just Do It", after watching this commercial I realized that with easier communication and the press and biased news channels, in the big world you have to watch your every step.

LeBron James grew up looking up to Michael Jordan, and now he IS the Michael Jordan. The only difference is, every step LeBron makes has 10 times as much weight as when Michael Jordan played basketball. I'm positive that LeBron James loves the game of basketball, and would like nothing more than to be able to play competitive basketball without any other worries. But with fame and fortune comes a whole lot of other 'luggage' to carry. People expect so much from him. Every slight mistake made is blown up by the press. And in this commercial, LeBron addresses all his fan's concerns. No matter what decision he made, he would've received criticism from the opposing side.

I think that this commercial matters to others because it finally opened people's eyes to the difficulties LeBron has to face. It's not as easy as every one may make it out to be. This matters to me because I've decided that I am no longer going to let others influence my actions if their influences are driving me away from what I love most. Sometimes it's about what you really care for, and not what you're supposed to care for. This commercial, on multiple levels, reflects modern society and the development of the media.

Connection: King Lear and Family Value

In the Shakespearean play King Lear occurs a bit of a role reversal, as King Lear loses his land and his wealth to his 'ungrateful' daughters. Though the story of King Lear was written hundreds of years ago, it is closely comparable to modern day familial relationships. Many claim that the new generations of children are showing much less respect to their parents and are becoming 'spoiled'.

Back in the 1800s/1900s, it was not uncommon for a child to be beaten for simply questioning his/her parents authority. Nowadays, children talk back to their parents as if they were simply another one of their friends. I'm not completely disagreeing with this, as this means that the child-parent barrier is being shredded down. But still, morals become corrupted as children quickly realize they do not have to watch their words.

Another direct example of how family value relates to King Lear is that in this century parents kick their parents into senior homes, as they believe that their parents are too big of a burden on themselves. They don't even consider the fact that their parents had to take care of them for years, throughout their whole childhood, and they might've once thought the same thing, that their children were a burden.

As time goes on, culture changes, and our changing culture and the crumbling formality between children and adults greatly resemble King Lear's conflicting situation.

360 Degrees: Intelligence

The notion of intelligence has been debated for years. But what really does being 'intelligent' mean? Each person views intelligence in their own way. When someone hears that a student is intelligent or smart, I would go as far as to say that most people automatically connect that to getting a 4.5 or above GPA. But does the ability to scarf down fact after fact in math class, to later forget it all, really prove your intelligence?

Then there's also the other handful of people, at least from my experiences, who claim to be 'street smart', which has erupted as an faux alternative to assert your intelligence if you're not exactly up-to-par with your fellow classmates. The original 'intelligence' I mentioned before has been crowned 'book smart'. What I see is that many people associate one another in one of these black or white areas. But what about the gray areas? Can you be getting a 3.8 GPA and still be 'street smart'? To answer this question, we should look at intelligence from all points of view.

Intelligence is a very vague subject. The possibilities for intelligence are broad and never-ending. I'd like to think that everyone can be intelligent in their own ways. A scientist could be intelligent in the field of biology or astronomy, and he may have 10x as much knowledge as our president in that field. So does that mean the president is not qualified to run the country, since there are clearly others who are smarter than him in different areas? Probably not. Intelligence is relative. Just as a physicist could explain quantum mechanics to you in a heartbeat, a quarterback could explain a flea flicker play to you in another heartbeat.

I've seen people share their expertise with others, especially in areas where others may have only lightly touched upon, and the other person is awed. If the other person was shocked or still cannot comprehend that knowledge, he assumes the teller of this knowledge is intelligent. It seems to me that this has existed for hundreds of years. Think about philosophers. Why did people regard them as brilliant? They posed questions no one had the answers to. Often philosophers said that intelligence was knowing that you don't know. So if many philosophers knew very little, and simply asked questions, why were they regarded as the most intelligent people in the world? They left people dumbfounded. I'd be curious how people would answer to the question, "What is intelligence?" To me, it's all relative.

Metacognition: Kite Runner Essay

Writing the Kite Runner essay was a laborious but beneficial project. Especially because of all the planning beforehand, I felt I was not stressed at all when writing this. In fact, the words flowed write out of my fingers. By making an evidence plan before hand, I was able to secure my abilities as a writer into a structured essay, allowing me to reach my full writing potential.

I believe that the hardest part of writing a piece, such as an essay, is beginning it. I spent a good 30 minutes just thinking about possible ideas to write about. I couldn't just use anything; I needed an idea that could fill my paper with vivid language and not bore the reader. So I thought. What's the most important lesson to be learned from this book? After spending hours reading this, there must be something that stuck with me. I just had to dig and find it. What did the main character Amir achieve through the duration of the book? What was the purpose of writing the whole book? I soon realized it was for redemption. Hosseini wanted to show his readers that redemption requires sacrifice. And as soon as that idea sprung into my head, I was able to come up with thousands of things to back it up. I was surprised that I knew the idea all along, it just took a little thinking to find it.

As mentioned before, I thought this was one of the easiest essays for me to write in a long time. I knew the material well, since we discussed it nearly every day. I found my evidence before hand, and I knew the structure we had to write in. Still, there were a few things I could've done slightly better, as always. Collecting evidence was a good preparation, but before that, I think it would've been better to mark the book with key points while reading it so that it would've been easier to look back to. I wrote down many interesting topics throughout the course of the book, but not necessarily the key points. I maybe could've spent a little more time on the conclusion, but as always, there's a limit on how much time you can spend on it. Other than that, I think the writing of this essay was pretty successful, and it improved my skills as a writer.

Blogging Around

Harrison Marick - An Inconvenient Truth: Adult Superiority
Harrison discusses how elders do not take advice from him or listen to him even though he's right, and he gives an example where he called a limo company and they laughed that a 16-year-old was booking a limo.

My comment:
I think this is a very valid point you made. I used to feel the same way, as my parents and elders also hesitate take advice from me. I feel I am right a lot of the times and although 'they are older and wiser' and they know 'much more than me', they refuse to listen to me and regard themselves as my superior.

And then I realized how they felt because I had conversations with kids younger then me who believed they knew what was right, for example my younger brother. He thinks he is right most of the time, when in fact I know I am right and later I find out that my assumption was correct. Now there have been a few times that he has been capable of doing things that I was not able to do, or if I was able to do it, he could do it slightly better. But sometimes you ignore a younger person in order to establish your superiority and acknowledge your own wisdom/intelligence.

Altogether, through years of trying to argue with my parents, I've discovered that when it comes to adult situations (for example dealing with money), their decisions usually triumph mine because they have more experience in that area. But we are the younger generation, and when dealing with a lot of other situations, we may have more expertise than our parents. And as you said, this 'class' between adults and children is inflexible, as parents are meant to be the wisdom-givers and not the wisdom-receivers, and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

Ben Wolch- Best of Week: Cliché
Ben discusses how even though clichés have a negative connotation, they sometimes are dead on. The utility of clichés outweighs all negativity. He uses the metaphor that just as a movie has music, a novel has clichés; they're crucial to putting the reader in the situation.

My comment: This post brings up a really great point. It's a cliché on clichés. And after reading this, I began to think: isn't all of life just a cliché. Everything we do, someone else has been through the same thing. Life is just a routine, passed down from generation to generation. Take the book Our Town for example, which wonderfully portrays this concept. Life has three 'milestones' birth, marriage, and death. Aren't these all clichés, done by nearly everyone? Happiness, obstacles, relationships, life passing and going, enemies, etc.; they're existent in everyone's life. Sure, a cliché is an overused phrase or opinion, but whether or not you use a cliché phrase, the overlooking notion is cliché in and of itself.

As you mentioned, clichés generally have negative connotations, but they are sometimes dead on. They are used to express events in a more general concept. So why do we use clichés? Well, an author wants to connect to his/her reader, right?. I think that a cliché purposefully has this trite meaning because it assures the author that the reader will be able to connect to that feeling. Even if a person is not aware of a certain cliché, the general idea embellished upon by the cliché is usually familiar to all. So clichés are sometimes necessary to express a feeling in the simplest of ways.

It Matters: The Taliban

In class, while reading the Kite Runner novel, we discussed Afghanistan's history. Russia invaded Afghanistan, but the Taliban was able to rid Afghanistan of Russians and won the allegiance of the Afghans. Contrary to local belief, conditions did not improve but instead worsened after the 'Talibs' came to power. And when foreigners attempted to save Afghans from the harsh conditions, as fictionally portrayed in the character Amir, they met fierce resistance and their life was put a huge risk.

This situation is oh-so-familiar; as this recent article mentions, the Pakistani Taliban are planning to attack foreigners helping with flood relief efforts in the country, according to a senior US official. But this concept isn't exclusive to Afghanistan. As with many genocides such as the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda, other countries and the UN have tried to send help but the situation there is so hostile that people do not want to put their lives in jeopardy to save the victims of the genocide.

When a powerful figure comes to power inspired with negative ideas, he can change a country. Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Taliban, believed that he could end the lawlessness in the country and make a positive effect on the country. In fact, he has done just the opposite. As of now, the US is sending thousands of dollars into Afghanistan, along with many troops teaching Afghans how to defend themselves from the Taliban. The US is trying to set up a stable government in Afghanistan, since the Taliban is the only major power there. In the Kite Runner, it was almost impossible for Amir to adopt Sohrab and bring him to the US because Afghanistan had no legal records. This is all because there is no central government. This shows that in order for a country to remain peaceful, there needs to be a strong central power with no corruption, especially at the head of it. Afghanistan has fallen into this hole, and it may take years to get out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11092868

Best of Week: The Worth of Blood

This week we had many discussions about the book Kite Runner, and there seemed to be this recurring idea of the role of 'blood' (or bachem in Arabic) and lineage and familial honor in the book. In particular, our class came to a conclusion that blood played a bigger role in the Eastern world than in the Western world, especially when it comes to marriage.

Amir's wife Soraya complained how she had to stay abstinent until marriage or you would be looked upon as a 'whore', whereas in America it is not uncommon to have sex before marriage. As Baba mentioned, in the Eastern world women try to marry a wealthy husband, and although Amir propositioned the idea of marrying Soraya, arranged marriages were not uncommon during the time.

I believe that marriage is a right, and you should marry out of love and not out of greed. I find it ironic that in America, where marriage is conducted based on love, the divorce rate is much higher than in other countries where there are arranged marriages. A lot of times divorces end up being because of economic problems.

Blood was also brought up in reference to familiar honor. Baba was known throughout Afghanistan as strong, powerful, and influential; so when Amir could not stand up to his father's name, Baba was disappointed because Amir would hurt the family reputation. Baba refused to take food stamps in America in fear of being seen by a fellow Afghanistan for precisely the same reason. Amir longed for a child who shared his blood, because he wanted his name to carry on. In the Western world this familiar honor is present, but not as prominent as in the Eastern world.

Through many of our discussions this week based on the novel Kite Runner, I learned that blood is interpreted as various things in different areas around the world.

What If?: World Peace

What if there was no discrimination in the world, no wars, no violence, no hunger, and no people dying from the lack of health care? I hear a lot of people wish and dream for that, but is it really what we want? What would we gain from that? Would our society be even more advanced as a whole? Would it be Utopic, bland, morbid? Or would it actually be as people imagined it, where every one is content and satisfied? It seems like world peace is the ultimate goal that will never be fulfilled, but people will always strive for. A lot of times it seems to me that when you work hard for something and finally accomplish it, you get a false sense of temporary happiness, but eventually you feel that there is nothing left to endeavor. For example, when you finish reading a book or beat a video game, you sometimes wish that you could go back to when you were enjoying the book/game and you were anxiously awaiting the ending. You could reread the book or replay the game, but it's not the same. Middle-aged people often wish to retire due to stress from work, but then when they retire their lives feel empty as there is nothing ahead for them to wish for. Will our society ever get to a point where we advance so far that the only way to go is backwards, and so we start to "de-evolve"? I've also wondered if we did have a harmonious world, would we overpopulate so much that our society demands population control. There is only so much of the Earth we can deforest and use to build homes for people. Will peace and creation now lead to discord and destruction later? Creating peace now doesn't guarantee a pleasant end result. You sometimes wonder that if you changed the present, would the future be how you conceive it.