The American Presidential Election

What a touchy subject. How do you talk about it without stepping on a few toes? I think the best way is to talk about the election more and the candidates less...but they can’t be completely left out. First off I should start by saying I actually am pretty interested in the American election. I feel like I know more about it than a lot of my friends, however, I do wish I knew more. While I neither live in the USA, nor plan to anytime in the future I still think it is important for Canadians to be informed seeing as we do share a border and many other things. And although my opinion doesn’t matter whatsoever, because I can’t vote in the States, I still enjoy following along in the process. I must admit that I was rather fond of the idea of Hilary Clinton taking office. Now I don’t know if I thought she was the best candidate, but the idea of having a female president was pretty cool! Since that is no longer an option, I’ve decided that I think Barack Obama would be the best candidate for the job. Again my opinion means nothing in this process, and I respect all other opinions, but I do think he would really rebuild many aspects of the USA. In the long run, I really hope this American election turns out better than the last two did...
-Emily

A Day in the Life.

When I woke up at 10:00 am yesterday the first thing I did was fire up my laptop and begin making plans for the day... over facebook. Did you know that some women pay too much for car insurance, or that there is such thing as a Super Model Diet? I know, it sounds super random, but those are just 2 things I learned from ads within my first 45 seconds on facebook. So already by 10:10 am I had been bombarded with media. Anyways it was decided that I would go over to my boyfriend’s house for lunch. When I arrived there he was sitting in his garage watching football with some friends. That’s right; he has a TV in his garage...he can pretty much watch TV where ever he is. After watching I don’t even know how little football, the commercials began. I swear if you asked me the score of that game, or even who played I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it. However, if you asked me what commercials I saw... well that’s a different story! I think there were Bud Light commercials, a Coke-a-cola commercial, Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Soup commercial, and countless others. That night we went to the movies. We just HAD to see Righteous Kill because simply because of Al Pacino and Robert Di Niro. I don’t think we would have chosen that movie had it not been for the actors in it. And really, do you think we could drive a safe speed on the highway? No. Why? Because we absolutely couldn’t miss the previews. It was, for some reason, essential that we see what movies would be coming out in the next 6 months. Who knew that movie previews had the unintended function of causing near car accidents?
-Emily

Advertising in Magazines

Who is Ken Paves? I asked myself the same question as I flipped through the pages of the most recent issue of Cosmo. I could tell that the image of a man surrounded by beautiful women was an advertisement but I had no idea what it was attempting to sell. Then in the top left corner I saw the words “Ken Paves.” I could only assume the man in the picture was Ken Paves, so I directed my eyes to the fine print on the bottom on the page. The words read “This is my world... and now it’s yours. My all-new, natural, botanical Healthy Hair TM line is now available over the beauty counter in fine hair stores everywhere.” Beside the fine print was a tiny picture of a bunch of bottles that I hadn’t even noticed before. I decided to go to this man’s website and figure out who the heck he was. Well it turns out “he’s one of the most sought after hairstylists in the world.” I guess should have known this was advertising for a hair product from all the women in the photo? Or maybe from the fancy dresses? Or perhaps it’s the tiny little bottles in the corner that look like they are perfume bottles? I guess what I’m trying to say is I really had no idea what the photo was trying to sell until I investigated a little bit more. Most people would say that if you can’t even tell what the product is then perhaps it’s a waste of an advertisement. I might have said the same thing at first, but as I wrote this blog I realized what this picture did to me. It made me look into the man and the product. Now I have an overwhelming urge to wash my hair! Success? I think so!
-Emily

Learn more about Ken Paves and his products at http://www.kenpaveshealthyhair.com/

Buy Nothing Day

At my high school we did a “Buy Nothing Day” all 4 years I was there. However, I didn’t think of it in the same context as I do after reading the topic for this post. I feel like Buy Nothing Day was advertised as “you don’t need to buy peoples friendship.” Now that I read about over consumption and consumerism it makes more sense, I think. When you think about Buy Nothing Day as I did before, it seems useless because really, if I want to buy a friend something, I will and that doesn’t mean I'm buying their friendship. Actually I don’t think I ever really participated. But now that I look at it in terms of buying useless things daily, spending my family’s money and the cultural and natural affect on the environment it seems a lot more appealing. I would love to see how much money I could save in a day if I didn’t buy anything at all. Commercialism and consumerism really does take over so much of our lives these days when you really think about all the things you buy, all the advertisements that you see, and ways society convinces you to buy into different things. I think this year I’ll try to actually buy nothing. Maybe it will open my eyes to the wonderful new world of saving money! ...maybe.

-Emily

The Ecology of Media

Who really knew how hard it would be to choose a technology to talk about?! Well after countless minutes of deliberation I’ve decided that it would only be fitting to choose the computer, seeing as it really is the only material I need to do this assignment at all! And really, can you think of another piece of technology that has been more influential in the past few decades than the computer? I can’t!

Now listing all the things that that a computer does to make life better would take forever, so I’ll just list a few:
1. The Internet; more information than any person really needs!
2. Word processing; time saver? Life saver!
3. Saving and backing up media; pictures, videos, music, documents all in one place!
4. Facebook; hours of entertainment!

But as Professor Lipton mentioned, all technologies have unintended consequences. Yes, yes, even the all mighty computer! But what are the consequences that go along with these purposes?
· The internet; inappropriate websites for kids (violence, sexuality, offensive material)
· Word processing; laziness... let’s face it this is being spell checked for me as I type
· Word processing: carpel tunnel syndrome, OWCH!
· Facebook: sexual predators, identity thefts, privacy infringements and over all creepers!

Personally I think the pros outweigh the cons and I couldn’t live without my computer... at least not as conveniently!

-Emily