No Blog!

So I think I am going to use the free pass this week. Yeah… okay!

Oops She Does it AGAIN

Britney Spears is behaving more like her soon to be ex-husband, Kevin Federline, than a pop princess on the verge of a career comeback.

Britney Spears exposes herself – CNN.com

As always, Britney Spears was in the news today, and this time it’s for yet another scandal that the star has created.  the article talks about Britney Spears’s latest antics, running around with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, causing a scene and partying every second of every day.  She is also said to have been wearing significantly less clothing, but the real scandal that made the news was her latest encounter with the paparazzi, where she she flashes her “panty-less crotch” to the cameras.  Other people have responded to her outrageous behavior, like her fans, and the woman who always seems to have something to say about everyone, Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie urged Britney to move in with her and her partner and kids so that she could have a family life around her.  The article talked about how Britney is hoping to make a career comeback, starting with maybe and interview with Oprah Winfrey, and possibly rumors of a duet with ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake.  Overall, Britney’s representatives think that the best thing for her to do right now is to come out with a new image, wholesome or not, and a very popular new single that she could release soon.
I know that we recently talked about celebrities and their children in class, so I thought that this article kind of related. I know a lot of people kept saying that we shouldn’t care about celebrities’s lives because they are just stupid famous people that we will never meet, but the fact is that you cannot escape hearing about these stories. Also, we talked about how it wouldn’t matter if a normal person screwed up, but everyone makes a big stink when someone famous makes a big OOPS. Well, the way that I see it is that Britney Spears knows how famous she is, and she knows that she is front page news, and that she is a huge role model to little girls. Therefore, I think that she has a responsibility to the public to do the right thing when she know she could be photographed. To parade around flashing your crotch to the paparazzi is completely unacceptable for something with such a young and impressionable fan base. And to end this lovely blog entry, I would just like to admit that me and my friend were intrigued by this article and for some reason decided to look at the pictures of Britney’s latest mishap, and yeah… it’s pretty trashy. Probably one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life. And I have never regretted a decision more in my life.

Nickel and Dimed

Barbara Ehrenreich’s somewhat of an exposé, Nickel and Dimed, describes the difficulties of living life at the poverty level.  Although Ehrenreich makes a valid attempt to relate to those living in poverty, and those working minimum wage jobs, I feel as if she did not totally grasp the concept. Ehrenreich talks about what a great worker she was, and how she was able to excel so much at her work that she even got to helping her coworkers finish their tasks after she had already completed her own. While this is a great achievement for her, I thought she praise herself far too much.  I like very much that she separates the ideas of being good at working, as opposed to being good at life.  I don’t think that she was nearly as good at life as she was at working. For example, she writes about how she cheated and called her doctor friend when she got a rash. If she had truly lived at the poverty level, there was no way that she could have afforded a doctor, so she can’t really understand what a huge effect that emergency bill would have had on her lifestyle. Also, she had the opportunity to have a car, and many – or most – people living in poverty do not have that luxury.  Furthermore, Ehrenreich was only supporting herself throughout this experiment. Even though one person is hard enough to support on minimum wage, most people living in poverty not only have to support themselves, but their families as well. It would have been a real wake up call for her to see what it would be like to take care of children during this experiment. Overall, I thought that Ehrenreich’s concept was genuine, but that she didn’t go about her observations the way I would have liked her to.
The short movie 30 Days on Minimum Wage is pretty much the same idea as this book, and I like it a lot better. In the show, a man and his wife give up their lives for 30 days to film the documentary and show the world how hard it is to live on only 7$ an hour. I feel like this movie was a better experiment because when he and his wife got sick, they actually went to the emergency room. They never cheated. They also spent some time with the man’s niece and nephew, and saw how much money it is to support children.  In the end, the couple ended up in debt, showing viewers that living at the poverty level is completely difficult. Another reason that I liked this film was because in the end, the man doing the experiment gave his views on what he thought should be done to reform society into giving more opportunity for, and preventing, people living at the poverty level. So yeah… if you liked Nickel and Dimed then you should see 30 Days on Minimum Wage.

New Beatles Album Causes Uproar

The Beatles’ “Love” album being released on Tuesday is a thorough reinterpretation of their work, with familiar sounds in unfamiliar places, primarily created by the son of the man who was in the control room for virtually all of their recording sessions.

Beatles smash hits now a mashup – CNN.com

Tomorrow, November 21, 2006, there will be a new Beatles album released.  Although John and George unforunately do not have the power to come back from the dead like Tupac Shakur, there will undoubtedly be a new album released named “Love.”  The album is a mixture of their songs, known as a “mashup.”  The CNN article that I found on their website gives and overview of the project and what the songs with be like.  Basically, the CD that is coming out will encorporate a few beatles songs into one.  For example, John Lennon at one point is singing “Strawberry Fields Forever” as you will hear bits and pieces of “Hello Goodbye” and “Penny Lane.”  The new album has caused an uproar among Beatles fans because they claim that it tampers with classic music.  The man behind the project was not even alive when the Beatles we at their prime, so fans are outraged that someone who is not even a “true” fan has the nerv to redo such untouchable music.  However, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have been in attendance throughout parts of the project and approving certain ideas, as well as the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison.  All four of them have approved most of the decision being man by Giles Martin, the man behind the project, although there were certain concerns about the quality of recordings and such.  I think that the new album is going to do badly on the charts just because people who have been Beatles fans since day one and were part of the whole Beatlemania craze – like my father – are going to completely boycott the album.  I think that since the Beatles are such icons in our culture and completely changed the face of music as we know it, most people will be outraged that someone who tamper with their music. There is a fine line between what you can change and what you shouldn’t change, and I think that this man crossed it.

File Sharing

Ever since Napster appeared on the scene, students have been causing college and university administrators headaches with their constant swapping of music and video clips — a habit that can stall a school’s computer networks.

CNN.com – Students’ file sharing overloads college networks – Oct. 10, 2002

I had to write a research paper for my educational computing class, and my topic was on music and movie file sharing, so I used this article for my paper. I thought that the article was very interesting. It talks about how instead of being concern with the fact that their students are “stealing” music, movie, and other media files, but they are worried that it is going to slow their networks.  Obviously, slow networks will cause a great problem, we experience it at least once a week, but the fact that they their concern was not about the illegal copyright infringement that was going on, but the slow connections they were experiencing. In the article, a student says that because so many people are taking files off of each other, it takes quite some time to download songs off one another because the network slows down. I personally have not had this problem while I was at school. I often use mytunes redux to download songs off of other people’s iTunes, and it goes quite instantly.  I think the fact that not too many people share their music here is a large factor in how fast I can do that. I also find that we don’t have that large of a problem here with downloading, because when I connect to iTunes I only see about five other people that are connected as well. Either that, or people just don’t share their music so their names don’t show up. When I go to RPI I can download just about every song in existence within seconds because their college is so technologically advanced that every kid has a high tech computer and thousands of songs on each other their computers.  Overall, I think that music and movie file sharing is going to remain to be a huge thing on college campuses because it’s so simple to do over the shared network.

This Weeks Reading

I’m starting to get EXTREMELY annoyed with this school. Our network has been down for about a week now, and I wasn’t able to get online all yesterday. So excuse the lateness, it’s not my fault everything breaks here all the time.

This weeks reading by Wesley Shumar called “Planning, Advertising, and Consumption” was very interesting.  His whole piece about the way college is becoming an advertisement, and the way it is presented to prespective students was really true.  He focused mostly on the bookstore of a school as well as the brochures that the college sends out.  The whole idea of it made me look back to my college searche and the decision to come to Saint Rose.  The bookstore at Saint Rose is EXTREMELY small. It may not look that way because our campus is also EXTREMELY small. But really, there is absolutely nothing impressive about the CSR bookstore.  My brother attends Ithaca College – a school that is not too much bigger than ours in population – and his bookstore is about 3 times the size.  However, I think what sells Saint Rose is the some what “homey” feel of the bookstore. The Ithaca one is pretty plain and somewhat unwelcoming.  The aspect of brochures is a whole different story.  I don’t think that any college mails you more crap or sends you more emails than Saint Rose.  However, this somewhat turned me off to the school to be honest. The whole idea of the cheesy tagline of “The Saint Rose Difference” was pretty embarassing to me to. I almost didn’t want to go to a school that made such a stupid claim.  Then again, the RPI tagline of “Why not change the world?” is pretty dumb too. I honestly don’t believe that students choose a school based on the advertisements for it.  The reason that I chose Saint Rose was because of the look and feel of the campus itself, the location from my home, and the programs that it has.  Also, this Wesley guy uses big words too and they are confusing.

Letters to God

A man who found 300 letters to God floating in the Atlantic Ocean said Friday he will donate them to a church instead of selling them on eBay following protests from religious people.

Dumped letters to God to be donated to church – CNN.com

The article that I found at CNN talks about a man who found 300 letters to God floating around in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Originally the man wanted to sell the letters on eBay, but there were a lot of religious protests following his findings, so he decided to donate them to a local church.  He found the letters in a plastic shopping bag around Atlantic City in New Jersey.  He was fishing and spotted something floating in the water so he went over and retrieved it from the ocean.  The notes that the man found seemed somewhat like the movie Bruce Almighty with one man asking God to give him the winning lottery numbers; however, there were also many other letters, like one from a girl asking forgiveness for having an abortion, and one from a prisoner who was innocent asking to be taken away so that he could be with his family.  the man who found the letters was going to auction them on ebay and then give the money that he got to charity, but it offended some very devoted religious people so he decided against it, knowing that too many people would be disappointed with him.  Another idea of what to do with the letteres was to burn them and then throw them back in the ocean.  In the end, the man decided to just give the letters to the church.  I thought that this was really interesting because I had never heard of people writing letters to God. I think that maybe this is some sort of therapeutic thing that could be very good for people. In fact, I think that more people should write their feelings down on paper, especially if they feel like they don’t have anyone else to communicate it to.  I tihnk that whoever got the letters meant for them to be put in the ocean as a symbolic gesture though, and that they should have just been lef tin the ocean.

Class Culture

In Julie Lindquist’s Class Identity and the Politics of Dissent: The Culture of Argument in a Chicago Neighborhood Bar she writes about her time as a bartender and the people she encounters.  She studies them to see the differences in class, and the way that the people in the bar spend their time.  What really bothered me about the piece is that even though she is supposed to be writing about the working middle class, Linquist uses a language that seems far superior.  I felt as though she was doing this to make herself seem more intelligent and to place herself superior to those people she encounters in the bar.  I thought that the whole message the class study got lost in the language she used because her vocabulary was so obnoxious at times that I couldn’t even stand to attempt to use context clues to figure out what she was saying.  She probably didn’t want people to stereotype her as a “lowly bartender,” but it seemed to me that she didn’t mind people stereotyping people in bars as pathetic or lonely.  The whole piece seemed really off to me, and I didn’t really enjoy it too much. I felt like throughout the whole thing Julie Linquist was trying to impress people and make herself sound extremely intelligent.  It felt as if the piece was meant to be demeaning to middle class citizens who go into bars to unwind, just relax, or to simply just get a drink.  If she was trying to prove a deeper point, I didn’t really get one out of it, probably because she used to many ridiculously confusing words for absolutely no reason.  If you are writing for and audience of middle class citizens about middle class citizens, why wouldn’t use a language that we would understand?

OH MY GOD!!!

Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon and “Flags of Our Fathers” star Ryan Phillippe are separating after more than seven years of marriage, their representatives said Monday.

Witherspoon and Phillippe split – CNN.com

It may not be the most important current event going on right now, but the article that I found is still one of the most upsetting pieces of information that I have received lately! I know that people always saying that celebrity couples never stay together, but I am still seriously shocked that Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe are separating! Reese has been my favorite actress since her hilarious role in Legally Blonde, so I was literally in tears when she won the Best Actress Oscar Award for her role as June Carter in Walk the Line. Ryan Phillippe I only really liked because he was her husband and they were just so darn cute together. The article that I found at CNN just gives a basic, vague overview about how the two super stars decided to split and are asking the press for some privacy throughout the whole thing. Of course we all know that the press will never honor this request since it’s their job to put their nose in other people’s business, no matter how rude and obnoxious it really is. I think the saddest part about the whole separation is the mention in the article of how the couple has two children together – a 7-year-old daughter named Ava and a 3-year-old son named Deacon – possibly the cutest children ever. The article then turns around and mentions how pretty much every celebrity couple divorces. When you sit and think about it, it’s extremely true. I can’t think of too many couples that have stayed together very long, except Antonio Banderas and his wife. It’s kind of strange how this happens. People always say things like “Hollywood couples never last” but I wonder why? Does Hollywood cast some strange spell upon couples to ruin all their relationships? If you make one hit movie and then become famous, is your love life doomed for all eternity? Personally, I never really thought that Reese and Ryan would ever break up, and it’s kind of depressing to know that they did. They were my last hope for all Hollywood couples!

the Achievement of Desire

I found that I, in no way, related toRodriguez’s story. He writes about his life and how his parents didn’t support his education. He goes on acknowledge that his father even tried to push him in a opposing direction. Rodriguez was also the son of Mexican immigrants,  and embarrassed by his heritage. I don’t think that it could be possible that I could be more different than Rodriguez.  My parents are the ones who push education on me. I take school so much more lightly and was able to get straight As in all my AP courses in high school with very little effort.  I never felt like I needed to try, and this frustrated my parents to no end. My mom would always push me to try harder, and get straight A+s like my older brother had, and he graduated 7th in his class. I had a very competitive graduating class of 500 as well, but I ranked a lowly 65 to my parents. It really surprised me that Rodriguez’s parents would discourage education. In fact, I almost feel like I wish that mine would, so that I could get grades for myself instead of for my parents.  Lastly, I find it really repulsive that Rodriguez disrespects his parents so much. Also, he’s ashamed of his roots, which I cannot fathom at all. I love being Irish and Italian and I really don’t care who knows it. Overall, I just didn’t really like the story because Rodriguez seemed kind of ungrateful and I couldn’t relate to it at all.