The end is near…

As my junior year ends, so do my blog posts. I must say I have had a good time writing these posts for all of you guys. I have written about everything from sports, to music, to podcasts, to English class.  I can definitely my mind has been shaped into being able to write about anything I want. I have definitely improved my skills as a writer. In school I have taken a lot of tough classes this year. I’ve learned a lot more about chemistry, biology, history, and math. In english class, I have developed my skills in not just writing, but also sketch-noting, annotating, reading, podcast-listening, and noticing modern and postmodern tenets in texts. Most of all I have learned to write blog posts. I have written many this year, my favorite ones being a post about the artist 6ix9ine, a post about the artist Kendrick Lamar, and Game of Thrones. I encourage you all to check out these and all of my other posts.

Thank you for staying with me this year, and good luck with the rest of your lives!

So it goes…

“Slaughterhouse-5”, by Kurt Vonnegut raises many questions about society. Although it raises many questions about society and the meaning of life, it also brings up an interesting point about time. The book states the idea that every moment in time is infinite. We can never die because the moments in which we are alive is infinite.

However, if this is the case, then every moment in which we are dead and every moment after is also infinite. Does this mean that we are always dead and alive?

This relates to a popular thought experiment known as Schrodinger’s cat:

“A living cat is placed into a steel chamber along with a hammer, a vial of hydrocyanic acid and a very small amount of radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the radioactive substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip the hammer, which will in turn, break the vial of poisonous gas and cause the cat to die.”

According to this, the cat is both dead and alive until someone looks into the chamber.

This is known as the idea of superposition.

Another question that is raised from the idea of infinite moments is that, if moments are infinite, and they always exist, the free will that we experience is an illusion, and it is all predetermined. If this is the case, what determines what will happen?

One theory is the idea that everything that can happen, will happen, better known as Murphy’s Law. I believe that every moment that could have happened, that could have been affected by the preceding moment happens in some universe. Every time a butterfly flaps its wings, something happens. But if the same butterfly had flapped its wings in a different way or at a different time, something different would happen. All of these instances are infinite, which is why the number of universes is infinite. Each of these moments is infinite and is predetermined to occur in an infinite number of universes.

How I fell in love with Game of Thrones

Recently in English class, we came across an article written by Avery Erwin entitled, “How I fell out of love with the internet”. After reading this, I wrote this post in a similar format.

1. Discover the show

Observe the hype surrounding the latest season of the show. Notice the tweets, memes, and discussions online about references to the show. Listen to your friends talk about the show. Feel bad that you cannot understand these references or participate in these conversations. Put the show on the top of your “things to watch next list”. Tell yourself that you will watch the show as soon as you have time.

2. Find time to watch the show

It’s summer break. Find a part time job at a lake as a lifeguard. Watch your coworkers binge Netflix during their breaks. Realize that now is the perfect time to start the show.

3. Find a way to watch the show

Look for the show on Netflix. Realize it’s not there. HBO Go is not worth the money. Hulu is not worth the money. Give up. Realize Hulu is in fact worth the money. Buy a hulu subscription with a 2 week free trial.

4. Start the show

Begin season one episode one of the show. Realize why the show is critically acclaimed and believed by many to be “the GOAT TV show”. Meet the characters of the show. Notice that they all look similar. Become confused by which one is which. Continue on to episode 2. Realize that the Lannisters are awful people (except for Tyrion).

5. Fall in love with the show

Come home from work and realize that you have the next week off. Spend the next 6 days eating, sleeping, and watching the show. Become attached to some characters. Cry when those characters die. Develop a hatred for other characters. Celebrate when those characters die. Thank George R. R. Martin for creating this beautiful emotional rollercoaster ride.

6. Spread the love for the show

Start talking to your friends about the show. Convince your friends who haven’t seen the show to watch the show. Talk to them as they go through the emotional rollercoaster you did. Discuss theories and predictions about the next season.

7. Plan to read the books next summer

Get excited for the summer. Plan to read the books after the show ends.

 

The Joe Rogan experience: Podcast analysis

 

“We don’t know our own biases.”

Russel Brand, an English comedian, actor, radio host, author, and activist, claims this idea in the midst of a 3-hour 20-minute conversation with Joe Rogan on Joe’s podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience. This episode was The Joe Rogan experience #1283.  Throughout the episode, Joe and Russel have conversations on many topics, from Russel’s book to his life experiences, choices, ideologies, etc. In the midst of a conversation about society’s judgment of individuals, Russel begins to talk about our biases as human beings. During this, he brings up an interesting point:

“You know of being a person that goes to sort of 12-step support groups is you recognize that everyone’s individual experience is valuable… I’ve got over the idea that there’s some external thing can be imposed… like you know whilst there are many people that we could say are not using their 50 years to maximum effect because they are pursuing odd material goals there are many many more people that have never been introduced to the idea of freedom because from the moment they’re born they’re economically tyrannized and told that if you are not economically valuable to this system you are not valuable at all and that’s only an idea but… if you can’t become a lawyer or whatever f*ck you” (1:37.56-1:38.43)

 

In this quote, Brand talks about the idea that society focuses too much on material things rather than the ideological things. I personally agree with this as well and think it relates to all of us, especially the culture at highlands. We focus so much on our grades, and our scores, and the college we’re going to, how much money we make, etc. We don’t care about living a happy life anymore. I think this is a result of the immense societal pressure being placed on all of us, and Russel verbalizes it perfectly: if you can’t contribute to the system, you are useless. Brand talks about this idea in very broad generalizations in order to get his point across, but then also uses the example of parental pressure of how “you must become a doctor/lawyer” in order to succeed.

 

Works Cited

“Joe Rogan Experience.” Wikipedia, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/The_Joe_Rogan_Experience_logo.jpg/220px-The_Joe_Rogan_Experience_logo.jpg.

“Materialism Makes You Miserable.” Nj Life Hacks, http://www.njlifehacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/materialism-makes-you-miserable.jpg.

PowerfulJRE. “Joe Rogan Experience #1283 – Russell Brand.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Apr. 2019, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5jCvRHEFk.

Game of Thrones: Will it live up to the hype?

The 8th and final season of game of thrones is premiering this Sunday on HBO, and I could not be more excited.

I began watching the show two summers ago, and somehow binged all 6 seasons in just 14 days. Then last year, I decided to rewatch the show again, but this time, I went slower, taking about a month for all 6 seasons and then watching the seventh season after it came out. I haven’t had time to rewatch the series again, mostly because of junior year of high school being more difficult, but will watch some recaps after writing this blog post in order to catch up.

The show itself is a work of art. A masterpiece. One of my favorites of all time. I’m not really big on fantasy; they spend too much time on the dragons and fairies. However, what makes Game of Thrones so much better is the character development, the plot twists, the unexpected turns. The show is so big that even the cast members don’t know what is going to happen until they receive their scripts for the episode.

WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

I first fell in love with the show after Ned Stark was beheaded. Why? Because it was at this point that I knew that anything can happen. No one is safe.

Despite knowing this, the show kept surprising me in different ways. I was surprised how long Joffrey survived and, like everyone else, was happy to see him die. I was surprised by the red wedding, by the death of Tywin, and then Jon Snow, and then the revival of Jon Snow, and the wildfire massacre, and Khal Drogo, and countless others.

I have not made any predictions for this season since I want to go in being completely surprised. However, I do think Jon Snow will end up sitting on the iron throne, or what’s left of it.

From all of the interviews I have watched of cast members on late night and talk shows, I believe that the show’s ending will be sad, but satisfying.

The hype for this show has been going on for a few months now. I myself have been counting down the days.

The show is also based on the book series “a song of ice and fire”, which I am planning to read after I finish the show, probably this summer (if I have time) or the next.

The minority report

Last week we watched and read “the minority report”. The short story was written by Philip K Dick, and the movie was directed by Steven Spielberg and featured Tom Cruise as John Anderton. I genuinely enjoyed reading the short story and watching the movie in class. The story and movie, although based on the same premise, were actually very different. The roles of many of the characters had changed, and many of the plot points had been altered.

The story was interesting to read for the concept of time travel, or just seeing into the future, while the movie was filled with action and suspense.

The story’s plot was more realistic, even though the concept of seeing into the future isn’t very realistic, the progression of the plot was more realistic. However, the movie’s plot, in my opinion, was much more satisfying. The way the movie tied everything together and connected every detail with plot twists made the movie more exciting to watch.

Warning! Spoilers Ahead!

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The movie implemented many of the modern and postmodern tenets we learned about in class, such as disorientation, fragmentation, surrealism, etc. One of the most prominent that I found interesting, was the use of irony. In many cases, the dialogue and the action of the movie ironically compliment one another. For example, after shooting Witwer, Lamar makes a speech about never having to fire a gun again.

There are many more cases of irony that show up in unexpected cases, which is what makes the movie so appealing. Witwer’s character is perceived as a villain at first, but is later revealed to be one of the “good guys”. The entire premise of the movie itself is ironic: the detective who locks up people accused of precrime gets accused of precrime himself.

This use of irony says a lot about our society. We tend to focus on small things in life instead of focusing on the bigger picture when ironically, they are connected.

I really enjoyed watching and reading “the minority report”, and look forward to reading the next book in English class.

 

Madness in march

Its already March 21st, but March has just begun. Its the time of year when my friends and I, along with millions across the world, create brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament, known as march madness. The round of 64 began today, and unfortunately, my bracket, along with many others, was busted in the first game after Louisville was upset by Minnesota. However, I have been perfect so far in every other game today. But as I write this blog post, I watch nervously on a split screen as Saint Mary’s (the team I picked to upset Villanova) is down by 6 with under 7 minutes left in the game.

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The tournament begins with 64 teams battling through games fearing elimination by losing just one game. The reason the NCAA tournament is so exciting is because of the number of upsets, and close games. Last year was the first time in history a 1 seed had lost to the 16th seed. Less than 1% of the people who had made brackets based on their predictions had accurately predicted it. It was also the first time a double-digit seed had made the final four.

The other part of this tournament, as I mentioned before, is the bracket challenge. The odds of a perfect bracket are incredibly small. Many people make multiple brackets in hopes of getting close. Last year I had made two, one with Arizona winning over Missouri, the other with Duke winning over Arizona. However since Arizona had lost in the first round, it wasn’t very likely I would win my group. I did end up predicting the upsets fairly well and had a 96% bracket going into the elite 8.

This year, I also made two brackets, one with Duke winning over UNC and the other with UNC winning over Duke. My main bracket (the one with Duke winning) is the one that is still mostly intact, that I had mentioned earlier. I had correctly predicted the Murray St upset as well as the Florida upset. The other bracket is mostly busted.

Hopefully, this year I can have better luck, and Saint Mary’s can come back to win this game.

 

Tech Talk

After reading George Orwell’s 1984, Jake Vengraitis and I presented a “Tech Talk” that was inspired by the issues raised in the book, such as government surveillance, freedom of speech, thought, and expression,  privacy, or technology. Jake and I decided to focus more on the media as a whole as well as large media conglomerates and different ways the media can influence and even brainwash an individual, which relates to 1984’s concept of doublethink and the “big brother” propaganda used to fool the citizens.

The media brainwashes us in many ways. We talked about the specific ways the media appeals to our emotions, use infotainment, clickbait, and biases in order to achieve their own selfish agenda. Our first two videos were examples of political bias in news organizations. The first one was on reactions to Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008, and the second was on reactions to Donald Trump’s “sh*thole countries” remark.

The two videos showed the ways the media enforces their biases onto the public by showing the same viewpoints over and over again. Although it is important to note that it is impossible to completely remove bias, it is apparent that many times these news organizations that claim to be unbiased are not really even attempting to expand their viewpoints. In this way, media companies can overly influence their viewers and even brainwash them to the point where society is unable to come up with new and original ideas, and are rather just going along with their “political beliefs” without understanding what they truly are. When we asked the class about their thoughts on these videos, Grace Morrissey stated that a good way to combat this problem would be to regularly watch both media sources that appear to be on both sides of the spectrum in order to expand our views and beliefs without being brainwashed by the media in this way. Colin Arber also responded by reiterating the point that all news should be taken with a “grain of salt.”

The next source we showed was an example of ways the media could appeal to our emotions in order to achieve this ulterior motive. Generally, this technique is seen in ASPCA commercials (appealing to our empathy), and food commercials (appealing to our food cravings). In this video, however, a comedian takes this technique to the next level by setting up an elaborate fake viral video of a pig saving a baby goat in order to attract tourists to the petting zoo. The video was made mostly for comedic relief but the effects of the video are very real. News companies and a majority of the public was fooled into believing the video. Although the comedian decided not to include the name of the petting zoo in the video as he felt it was not the right thing to do, it is apparent that the media has the capabilities to brainwash us in this way and are likely doing it right now without us realizing it. We also showed another example of a group of people fooling the internet into thinking Justin Beiber eats burritos sideways. through the use of this technique, asserting the idea that this issue is relevant in our society today.

As a final activity, we decided to have the class draw small symbols or logos “sketchnote” style on a post-it note that represented anything they had learned during our presentation. These are some of the sketches they created:

 

 

 

I feel that our facilitation of this discussion went very well. We made good choices with the sources as the class remained mostly engaged and interested in the topic. I think one thing that could have worked better was that we should have come up with a better system to display the sketches of the class since many of the post-its were sub-par in their stickiness levels. I was pleasantly surprised by how during the reflection with the post-it activity, most of the class focused on the large idea of the ability of the media to influence and brainwash its audience, rather than just focusing on the video of the pig and Justin Beiber. I had expected more of the class to focus on the more “entertaining” parts of the facilitation and was glad to see that everyone had paid attention to the important lessons as well.

 

Annotated Bibliography:

“’Brainwashed Cult’: US Broadcast Group Slammed for Mass ‘Fake News’ Promos.” SBS News, SBS News, 2 Apr. 2018, http://www.sbs.com.au/news/brainwashed-cult-us-broadcast-group-slammed-for-mass-fake-news-promos.

Central, Comedy. “Nathan For You – Petting Zoo Hero Pt. 2.” YouTube, YouTube, 8 Mar. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvtJj6HoYHg.

Central, Comedy. “Nathan For You – Petting Zoo Hero.” YouTube, YouTube, 26 Feb. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2My_HOP-bw. This video is an example of how the media can use appeals to emotion in order to brainwash the viewers. Although it was intended as a comedy video, we believed it also effectively supported our idea of media being too overly influential.

Farhi, Paul. “How Biased Are the Media, Really?” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Apr. 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-biased-is-the-media-really/2012/04/27/gIQA9jYLmT_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a6cd2c8de4f5.

Liebau, Platt. “The Biggest Problem With Media Bias.” Townhall, Townhall.com, 25 Sept. 2012, townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2012/09/25/the-biggest-problem-with-media-bias-n665273.

Purcell, Natalie. “Doublethink in 1984: Definition & Examples.” Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/doublethink-in-1984-definition-examples.html.

Post, Washington. “CNN and Fox News Hosts React to Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Remark.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Jan. 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrynNeqx48I. This video is an example of major media corporations showing biases. The source, The Huffington Post is reputable and reliable but it is still biased. However, the video doesn’t contain any opinions, only examples.

Slate. “Fox vs. MSNBC: Michelle’s Speech.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Aug. 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Pjudf0810. This video, like the Huffington post video, is merely a compilation of clips from other news corporations that show media bias. Although the source itself could be biased, the information in the video is reliable because it only gives examples, not opinions or claims.

“The Art of Brainwashing.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-chemistry/201803/the-art-brainwashing. This article from Psychology today was the source we used to research media brainwashing and different techniques the media uses to brainwash the viewers.

Theory, Yes. “We Fooled the Internet w/ Fake Justin Bieber Burrito Photo.” YouTube, YouTube, 28 Oct. 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6In7UtyXY.

 

1984: newspeak

After reading the first two parts of “1984”, by George Orwell in my English class, I began to ponder the idea of the language Orwell has created and dubbed “newspeak”. The language is explained in the appendix of the book as the official language of Oceania. Newspeak is designed to limit expression and thought in order to make rebellious thought literally impossible. The vocabulary for Newspeak is shrinking with each edition of the Newspeak dictionary.

An important aspect of Newspeak is the idea of eliminating words that are unnecessary. For example, instead of bad, one would say “ungood”, or “doubleplus ungood” for very bad or awful.

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Some of these words don’t really reflect any rebellious thought that could be harmful towards the government. But, they are removed anyway. Because of this, I thought that Orwell could be revealing another idea about our society and human life in general, separate from the main theme of the book regarding oppression from the government.

I remember seeing a quote on social media that I am unable to find again that talked about this concept of language in a unique way. It said something along the lines of:

https://backtothefuture1984.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/translation-of-article-to-newspeak/

“There is no hate. Hate is just the absence of love”

This reminded me of how in 1984, the term for bad is “ungood”, meaning that there is no “bad”, just the absence of “good”. In a way, this perspective on life is very optimistic, especially in a book that has an incredibly dark context.

1984 raises many questions about society, but the ones it raises through the language of newspeak is incredibly intriguing. Is the language only there to suppress society’s expression? Or can it also make life more optimistic, by removing negativity and seeing everything through a positive lens?

UBI: Is it a good idea?

As some of you may know, I am turning 17 very soon. This means many things, including the fact that I will be able to vote next year. After listening to a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, where Joe Rogan interviewed 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and talked to him about many current political issues.

Andrew Yang is a Democrat who has announced his plans to run for president in 2020. He has many interesting takes on political issues, such as abortion, legalization of marijuana, Medicare, etc. However, one of his major policies involved UBI, or Universal Basic Income. This is an idea I have heard of before but did not know much about it at all. It sounded like a form of communism or socialism that would not work, which is why I was interested to hear what Yang had to say.

https://www.yang2020.com/

 

After listening to the episode, I began to appreciate the type of candidate Andrew Yang was. He was well spoken and was able to quote statistics and facts off the top of his head, and unlike other politicians, he was actually answering Joe’s questions rather than working around them to attain his own agenda. Although I do not trust his numbers completely since I was unable to fact check them, his ideas did make sense.

Many people believe UBI would just inflate prices and not do much to help the poor, however, this is not true since the money isn’t being newly printed, but repurposed through taxes. I do see many of the problems that could arise with UBI, such as reduced incentives to work. However, the counterarguments Yang raised were very persuasive: he talked about how a UBI could help reduce the costs of healthcare, incarcerations, crime, etc.

In addition, I believe the current problem with welfare is that it reduces the incentive to work hard. With UBI, everyone still has the incentive to work, because they still have the desire to get rich. UBI is only there for the people who are unable to do so to survive.

Although I must admit I have not researched enough on the topic to have an educated opinion, which is why I would need to research the opposing views to UBI and Andrew Yang’s policies.

This kind of information is another reason I love the Joe Rogan Experience. It can provide me with knowledgable insight on current events and spark my curiosity on topics such as these, while also containing comedic relief that makes the podcast enjoyable to listen to.

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