HAHAHAHA I completely forgot about being a total creeper in class with my BUILT IN WEBCAM!!!!
How unappropriate. haha
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
School Girl Crush
HAHAHAHA I completely forgot about being a total creeper in class with my BUILT IN WEBCAM!!!!
Yea man, just add me on FACEBOOK!
Media Hegemonies.
The media hegemony we chose to look at was the ever so fast growing and popular facebook. The first thing we looked at was thealbumoftheday.com/facebook, then got together and discussed and made up a brain map for the corporation of facebook. Its pretty new so there isnt that much information bout the hegemonic views. Although it is everywhere. Parents use it, kids use it, people in the government, and now more than ever- large corporations are working on buying it out to use as a source of information about the general public. However, unlike other networking websites (for example, Myspace or Xanga - who have been bought out by NewsCorp) facebook still has it's own entity and has only begun to move towards a "controlled social environment".
When you start up your own facebook account there is a little box you must check that allows facebook to take all information you put on there page and do with it what they will. There terms of use is constantly updated, and can be changed and revised anyway they like. Most people are very ignorant to this information, if they read it before signing up for access to the site at all. Since they state that they have access to all your information and can do with it what they will, this is like a goldmine when it comes to advertisers, and big corporations. The truth of this is really shown by Microsofts recent purchase of 1.6% of Facebook, for the price of $240 million.
Here are some key points that we have placed onto our visual poster for the hegemonies project:
First venture capital money to Facebook was $500,000 from Peter Theil, founder and former CEO of paypal. He has written a book called the Diversity Myth, which received many notable praises from neo-conservatives like William Kristol.
Further funding comes from Accel Partners Inc, another venture capitalist firm. They donated over 12 million. James Breyer is the manager of the company, and formerly on the chair of the national venture capital associations (NVCA). And served on the board with Gilman Louie who is the CEO of In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is funded by the CIA and is a firm that works on gathering all aspects of gathering data about people.
Breyer has also been on the board of BBN Technologies, which is a research and development firm most known for starting the Internet. A board member at BBN Tech is Dr. Anita Jones who has served on In-Q-tel herself and has also been involved Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Information Awareness Office was shutdown after protests against privacy issues. The main reason for this organizations creation was to a database of information about everyone. It seems like Facebook has taken on this organizations intentions only in a consentual way. The IAO was also receiving funding from the CIA.
For more information on facebook, and their terms of services here are some great links I found.
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.facebook.com/ads/
http://developers.facebook.com/
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=41997 (this page gives a TON of links)
Other topics we looked up; DARPA, Elisha Jones
The media hegemony we chose to look at was the ever so fast growing and popular facebook. The first thing we looked at was thealbumoftheday.com/facebook, then got together and discussed and made up a brain map for the corporation of facebook. Its pretty new so there isnt that much information bout the hegemonic views. Although it is everywhere. Parents use it, kids use it, people in the government, and now more than ever- large corporations are working on buying it out to use as a source of information about the general public. However, unlike other networking websites (for example, Myspace or Xanga - who have been bought out by NewsCorp) facebook still has it's own entity and has only begun to move towards a "controlled social environment".
When you start up your own facebook account there is a little box you must check that allows facebook to take all information you put on there page and do with it what they will. There terms of use is constantly updated, and can be changed and revised anyway they like. Most people are very ignorant to this information, if they read it before signing up for access to the site at all. Since they state that they have access to all your information and can do with it what they will, this is like a goldmine when it comes to advertisers, and big corporations. The truth of this is really shown by Microsofts recent purchase of 1.6% of Facebook, for the price of $240 million.
Here are some key points that we have placed onto our visual poster for the hegemonies project:
First venture capital money to Facebook was $500,000 from Peter Theil, founder and former CEO of paypal. He has written a book called the Diversity Myth, which received many notable praises from neo-conservatives like William Kristol.
Further funding comes from Accel Partners Inc, another venture capitalist firm. They donated over 12 million. James Breyer is the manager of the company, and formerly on the chair of the national venture capital associations (NVCA). And served on the board with Gilman Louie who is the CEO of In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is funded by the CIA and is a firm that works on gathering all aspects of gathering data about people.
Breyer has also been on the board of BBN Technologies, which is a research and development firm most known for starting the Internet. A board member at BBN Tech is Dr. Anita Jones who has served on In-Q-tel herself and has also been involved Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Information Awareness Office was shutdown after protests against privacy issues. The main reason for this organizations creation was to a database of information about everyone. It seems like Facebook has taken on this organizations intentions only in a consentual way. The IAO was also receiving funding from the CIA.
For more information on facebook, and their terms of services here are some great links I found.
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.facebook.com/ads/
http://developers.facebook.com/
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=41997 (this page gives a TON of links)
Other topics we looked up; DARPA, Elisha Jones
Monday, November 26, 2007
The world will never understand
I hate thinking about semiotics. period.
What I get from it, is it is the study of signs with implicit and explicit meanings. It is a theoretical way to analyze the world around us that distinguishes between:
"- semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for;
- syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs;
- pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters (Chandler 1)."
Semiotics is what distinguishes our different views because of what we have been shown, what we have absorbed our entire lives. This is why in the process of encoding and decoding sometimes the message the addresser is trying to get across may never get decoded at all by the addressee, he may not have been taught or shown anything in that subject to understand.
This reminded me of something Cara had been talking about earlier in the year, as well as something else I had heard of quite a few years ago, Feral Children. The two that are most known are the wild child, who was raised by dogs until he was the age of 12. Found at a very young age after his parents had left him in the woods to die. Or, a young girl named Genie. Her parents had tied her to a chair up in their attic until she was 13 years old. She had no communication, education, stimulation, or even light. When she was found, not only could she only whimper since having no prior communication with anyone- but she could also not stand erect because she was tied to a potty-chair her whole life (except for the nights when she was remembered. She would then get strapped into an over sized crib that had a metal sheet as an overhead cover) and never learnt to stand. Apparently, her father was psychotic. He hated children and had killed two children previous to Genie. One died of pneumonia when he left it in a garage, a second choked on his own mucus. There was a third child that was saved by the grandmother, and he is still alive today and helped in aiding the mother to feed Genie. Neither of them spoke to her because they feared the father, and had been victimized themselves. "The discovery of Genie aroused intense curiosity among psychologist, linguists, neurologists, and others who study brain developement. They were eager to know what Genie’s mental level was at the time she was found and whether she would be capable of developing her faculties (Pines 2). She had been rehabilitated and over went through special training to try and teach her to communicate. What they had found out in their research was that there is a critical time in a childs development where if the 'language acquisition' is not stimulated it may become impaired later on if it emerges at all (Pines 2).
Susan Curtiss, a psychologist, worked with genie in trying to help he develop speech. Curtiss also was working to develop a hypothesis about language and the relationship between the left and right sides of the brain.
"When Genie arrived in Children’s Hospital in November 1970, she was a pitiful, malformed, incontinent, un-socialized, and severely malnourished creature. Although she was beginning to show signs of pubescence, she weighed only 59 pounds. She could not straighten her arms or legs. She did not know how to chew. She salivated a great deal and spent much of her time spitting" (Curtiss 1). She walked with a jerky motion with her hands curled up like a rabbit, and within seven moths she had learned how to speak roughly one hundred words and was able to conjoin two of them together ("big teeth", or "Little Marble"), and she was also potty trained.
However, she had a lot of saliva and would drool everywhere and all over her clothes. She also masturbated obsessively.
According to Eric Lenneberg, language can only be learned during the critical period between two years of age and puberty. This theory was created in 1967, and was proven wrong in 1971 when genie was found, and started her special training. "the brain of a child before the age of two is not sufficiently mature for the acquisition of language, while after puberty, when the brain’s organization is complete, it has lost its flexibility and can no longer acquire a first language" ( Lenneberg 1). This is not one hundred percent accurate as Genie showed by learning few words, but the basic idea is correct. She still can not communicate as effectively as most 3 year olds, which has also been shown when her progress came to a halt a few years later. This can also be described as the third principle of perception from Lipton's notes "We are not born perceiving. We learn to perceive and not to percive"
"Among human beings, four-week-old babies can recognize the difference between some 40 consonants that are used in human languages, as shown by how their sucking and heartbeats change when different consonant sounds are presented by audiotape. That ability seems to be innate, since babies respond to many more consonants that are used in their parents’ language—English, for example, has only 24 consonant sounds, yet babies of English-speaking parents react to the consonants present in Japanese. Babies lose that ability as they grow up. By the age of six, when children enter school, their ability to hear the difference between sounds to which they have not been exposed in their own language is severely reduced. Feature detectors responsible for recognizing about a dozen consonant sounds have so far been inferred to exist in the human brain. They need to be triggered by the environment, however: if not, they appear to atrophy." (Pine 1)
Although Genie had ended up learning different words, she didn't understand verbs or grammar, nor did she know how to ask a question. Noam Chomsky theorized that grammatical principles are what distinguishes the language of human beings to that of an animal.
The following is the transcript for the television program Secret of the Wild Child hosted by the NOVA station;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html
A song that was written about Genie by an Indie band named Killjoy Confetti. If you go to this link you can both view the song lyrics, and clink another link to hear the song... ( I wouldn't suggest it though. ha ha)
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/listbooks.php?bk=arcade
And finally, this is a video clip from the documentary made about Feral Children named Mockingbird Don't Sing
"model of oral communication is (for its time) innovatingly labelled as a 'speech circuit' and includes directional arrows indicating the involvement of both participants (thus at least implying 'feedback'), it too was nevertheless a linear transmission model (albeit a 'two-track' one). It was based on the notion that comprehension on the part of the listener is a kind of mirror of the speaker's initial process of expressing a thought (Saussure 1983, 11-13; Saussure 1974, 11-13; Harris 1987, 22-25, 204-218). In this model there is only the briefest of allusions to the speaker's use of 'the code provided by the language', together with the implicit assumption that a fixed code is shared (Saussure 1983, 14; Saussure 1974, 14; " (Chandler 1)
What I get from it, is it is the study of signs with implicit and explicit meanings. It is a theoretical way to analyze the world around us that distinguishes between:
"- semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for;
- syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs;
- pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters (Chandler 1)."
Semiotics is what distinguishes our different views because of what we have been shown, what we have absorbed our entire lives. This is why in the process of encoding and decoding sometimes the message the addresser is trying to get across may never get decoded at all by the addressee, he may not have been taught or shown anything in that subject to understand.
This reminded me of something Cara had been talking about earlier in the year, as well as something else I had heard of quite a few years ago, Feral Children. The two that are most known are the wild child, who was raised by dogs until he was the age of 12. Found at a very young age after his parents had left him in the woods to die. Or, a young girl named Genie. Her parents had tied her to a chair up in their attic until she was 13 years old. She had no communication, education, stimulation, or even light. When she was found, not only could she only whimper since having no prior communication with anyone- but she could also not stand erect because she was tied to a potty-chair her whole life (except for the nights when she was remembered. She would then get strapped into an over sized crib that had a metal sheet as an overhead cover) and never learnt to stand. Apparently, her father was psychotic. He hated children and had killed two children previous to Genie. One died of pneumonia when he left it in a garage, a second choked on his own mucus. There was a third child that was saved by the grandmother, and he is still alive today and helped in aiding the mother to feed Genie. Neither of them spoke to her because they feared the father, and had been victimized themselves. "The discovery of Genie aroused intense curiosity among psychologist, linguists, neurologists, and others who study brain developement. They were eager to know what Genie’s mental level was at the time she was found and whether she would be capable of developing her faculties (Pines 2). She had been rehabilitated and over went through special training to try and teach her to communicate. What they had found out in their research was that there is a critical time in a childs development where if the 'language acquisition' is not stimulated it may become impaired later on if it emerges at all (Pines 2).
Susan Curtiss, a psychologist, worked with genie in trying to help he develop speech. Curtiss also was working to develop a hypothesis about language and the relationship between the left and right sides of the brain.
"When Genie arrived in Children’s Hospital in November 1970, she was a pitiful, malformed, incontinent, un-socialized, and severely malnourished creature. Although she was beginning to show signs of pubescence, she weighed only 59 pounds. She could not straighten her arms or legs. She did not know how to chew. She salivated a great deal and spent much of her time spitting" (Curtiss 1). She walked with a jerky motion with her hands curled up like a rabbit, and within seven moths she had learned how to speak roughly one hundred words and was able to conjoin two of them together ("big teeth", or "Little Marble"), and she was also potty trained.
However, she had a lot of saliva and would drool everywhere and all over her clothes. She also masturbated obsessively.
According to Eric Lenneberg, language can only be learned during the critical period between two years of age and puberty. This theory was created in 1967, and was proven wrong in 1971 when genie was found, and started her special training. "the brain of a child before the age of two is not sufficiently mature for the acquisition of language, while after puberty, when the brain’s organization is complete, it has lost its flexibility and can no longer acquire a first language" ( Lenneberg 1). This is not one hundred percent accurate as Genie showed by learning few words, but the basic idea is correct. She still can not communicate as effectively as most 3 year olds, which has also been shown when her progress came to a halt a few years later. This can also be described as the third principle of perception from Lipton's notes "We are not born perceiving. We learn to perceive and not to percive"
"Among human beings, four-week-old babies can recognize the difference between some 40 consonants that are used in human languages, as shown by how their sucking and heartbeats change when different consonant sounds are presented by audiotape. That ability seems to be innate, since babies respond to many more consonants that are used in their parents’ language—English, for example, has only 24 consonant sounds, yet babies of English-speaking parents react to the consonants present in Japanese. Babies lose that ability as they grow up. By the age of six, when children enter school, their ability to hear the difference between sounds to which they have not been exposed in their own language is severely reduced. Feature detectors responsible for recognizing about a dozen consonant sounds have so far been inferred to exist in the human brain. They need to be triggered by the environment, however: if not, they appear to atrophy." (Pine 1)
Although Genie had ended up learning different words, she didn't understand verbs or grammar, nor did she know how to ask a question. Noam Chomsky theorized that grammatical principles are what distinguishes the language of human beings to that of an animal.
The following is the transcript for the television program Secret of the Wild Child hosted by the NOVA station;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html
A song that was written about Genie by an Indie band named Killjoy Confetti. If you go to this link you can both view the song lyrics, and clink another link to hear the song... ( I wouldn't suggest it though. ha ha)
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/listbooks.php?bk=arcade
And finally, this is a video clip from the documentary made about Feral Children named Mockingbird Don't Sing
"model of oral communication is (for its time) innovatingly labelled as a 'speech circuit' and includes directional arrows indicating the involvement of both participants (thus at least implying 'feedback'), it too was nevertheless a linear transmission model (albeit a 'two-track' one). It was based on the notion that comprehension on the part of the listener is a kind of mirror of the speaker's initial process of expressing a thought (Saussure 1983, 11-13; Saussure 1974, 11-13; Harris 1987, 22-25, 204-218). In this model there is only the briefest of allusions to the speaker's use of 'the code provided by the language', together with the implicit assumption that a fixed code is shared (Saussure 1983, 14; Saussure 1974, 14; " (Chandler 1)
1. Daniel Chandler, Semiotics For Beginners, Encoding/Decoding, February 19th, 2001.
2. Myra Pines, Tripod, The Civilizing of Genie, October 8th, 2002
<http://kccesl.tripod.com/genie.html> Other names used with this link; Susan Curtiss, and Eric Lenneberg
3. Andrew Ward, The Regents of the University of California, Genie, A modern day wild child, 2007
All the flowers would have very extra special powers...They could sit and talk to me for hours
I remember in the very first class we had with Mark Lipton, he told us he loved metaphors. before class was over, he had mentioned how all of us had been little seeds, and although we may believe all he is doing is feeding us large amounts of fertilizer, we all have the potential to become beautiful flowers. I asked him what his favourite flower was at the end of class, and he told me he loves white tulips, and find gingersnaps to be the most interesting. Then in class last week he had talked about shovelling shit - and mentioned something about 'not using that in our end letter, because that was his metaphor'. It made sense, so I figured... I might as well make one up on my own. Except I'm not going to write it about him, or his class... just the part of it that stressed me out the most, the blog.
Blogs, and more specifically, the type of blog that Mark Lipton has us writing are like leaves. The nature of a leaf, is to fall, fade and eventually disintegrate into nothing. However, in a new season, new ones will stem from the old. I sat and thought about how many students will actually keep their blogs when all is said and done. If they are not kept up with, the memories of them will fall from our minds as something we only once were, and the beliefs we only once thought about. As for the people who have not kept up with them but have kept a record of their old thoughts, and things they have learned- they will surely use there blogs once again to sprout new ideas- but for different subjects. "new ideas, will stem from the old". If they don't, I questioned whether they should be deleted to clean up the already cluttered world wide web. Like fallen leaves, should they be racked away and forgotten?
Blogs spur on new content, and the pile up of old ones has an unbelievable mass. People blog about their beliefs, about subjects they feel strongly about. They blog about whats going on in their life- as an online journal- and even schoolwork, and projects. What happens if they change their beliefs, or change their mind about something they once believed in so strongly- should those thoughts be deleted? Or should we take advantage of the fact that our minds once thought a certain way- but has grown. Look at it for what it once was, a beautifully coloured individual idea - then maybe take a look at what has happened in that time around you in the world, what was being shown to you through the media? through your family, your friends, and your lifestyle? How had it effected you directly?
David Weinberger used a similar metaphor but for folksonomy.
Folksonomy — A means of classifying and categorizing data on the web through collaborative efforts from the online community. This is more commonly known as (though not strictly synonymous to) ‘tagging’. ( Sixthings 1)
In his analogy he stated "that we want complexity - we want to find the answers ". To relate this to my metaphor, I would like to think that if someone wanted complexity and is reading one of your old posts- they would take the time to pay attention to dates, as well as other content and maybe explore some of your newer ideas as well as the old.
<--- And a beautiful flower I am.
1. "A Quick Web 2.0 Glossary." SixThings. 24 Feb. 2006. SixThings. 26 Nov. 2007.
Blogs, and more specifically, the type of blog that Mark Lipton has us writing are like leaves. The nature of a leaf, is to fall, fade and eventually disintegrate into nothing. However, in a new season, new ones will stem from the old. I sat and thought about how many students will actually keep their blogs when all is said and done. If they are not kept up with, the memories of them will fall from our minds as something we only once were, and the beliefs we only once thought about. As for the people who have not kept up with them but have kept a record of their old thoughts, and things they have learned- they will surely use there blogs once again to sprout new ideas- but for different subjects. "new ideas, will stem from the old". If they don't, I questioned whether they should be deleted to clean up the already cluttered world wide web. Like fallen leaves, should they be racked away and forgotten?
Blogs spur on new content, and the pile up of old ones has an unbelievable mass. People blog about their beliefs, about subjects they feel strongly about. They blog about whats going on in their life- as an online journal- and even schoolwork, and projects. What happens if they change their beliefs, or change their mind about something they once believed in so strongly- should those thoughts be deleted? Or should we take advantage of the fact that our minds once thought a certain way- but has grown. Look at it for what it once was, a beautifully coloured individual idea - then maybe take a look at what has happened in that time around you in the world, what was being shown to you through the media? through your family, your friends, and your lifestyle? How had it effected you directly?
David Weinberger used a similar metaphor but for folksonomy.
Folksonomy — A means of classifying and categorizing data on the web through collaborative efforts from the online community. This is more commonly known as (though not strictly synonymous to) ‘tagging’. ( Sixthings 1)
In his analogy he stated "that we want complexity - we want to find the answers ". To relate this to my metaphor, I would like to think that if someone wanted complexity and is reading one of your old posts- they would take the time to pay attention to dates, as well as other content and maybe explore some of your newer ideas as well as the old.
<--- And a beautiful flower I am.
1. "A Quick Web 2.0 Glossary." SixThings. 24 Feb. 2006. SixThings. 26 Nov. 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
A Good Scare, An Even Better Laugh
The Podcast;
On November 10th my group and I got together to quickly make a podcast. With Halloween just passed we had all been watching a bunch of scary movies- which made for a very interesting topic choice. We each wrote a short paragraph about areas of the school portraying them as a place with a haunting story that has to do with a boy named earnest. Katherine wrote about the room 666, Adam wrote about the elevator, Cara wrote about the rooftop, Vanessa wrote about the laundry room, and I wrote about the tunnel that connects S and R building. The script was really fun to write because the group all had very similar ideas, and very similar senses of humour, and because it had to do with horror and make-believe. We wanted to create a myth for the residence buildings to interest the students who live in residence. It’s thrilling to think about the place you living having a haunting persona. There was a couple times where we found it hard to stay on topic because our imaginations ran off with us.
Cara and Vanessa are smarter with technology so we let them do the recording for the podcast- although we were all present for the recording in case we felt like we needed any revising done. Then we put it into an mp3 in real podcast form.
Podcast Tour of Humber College Residence, formerly the Rexdale School for Boys
RECORDING SCRIPT (effects will be added to the real mp3)
Vanessa: There is one recorded fatality at the Rexdale School for Boys. His name was Earnest, and he was 13 years old. He lived in Room 666, and he was liked by all his peers. He was discovered in his room slumped over his bureau with his history textbooks open. Cause of death: Homework Overload.
Cara: We’re here now at the Rexdale School for Boys today, now known as Humber North College Residence, where we are going to be leading a tour. Please stay with us as we venture through the tunnel that has an unknown history to the students who live here now.
Vanessa: The tunnel, which connects S building to the rest of the residence, was built over a fire pitt which students would use to burn all of their work at the end of the school year. To this day, some students say that they can feel what they can only describe as a hot spot as they pass through the tunnel.
The laundry room was used as the detention room back when it was a board school. Rumor has it that sometimes kids were made to stay in the detention room for over 24 hours. Some students would smuggle in small games to play to help pass the time. Ghosts are said to be seen in the laundry room and jacks have been found in the corner of the room.
Cara: Back when the building was for the Rexdale School for boys, the elevator was only supposed to be used by the cleaning maids and teachers. Some boys that were risky enough snuck into it regularly, just for the thrill of breaking the rules. Often they would ride up to the roof and look out over the landscape, usually a sunset or sunrise. Lets take a look up there now and find out what we can see.
Currently from the roof you can see the other residence buildings, the daycare centre, Hwy 27, and the Humber and Guelph-Humber buildings. At the time of the Rexdale School, most of this area wasn’t developed, so there was really nothing to see except a dirt path and a few trees. But the view wasn’t the only reason to go up to the roof. Professors used the roof as an illegal zone...they smoked and drank like there was no tomorrow. They assumed that no students would see them. However, Earnest and some friends went up to the roof one night, and they found their three teachers drunk, dancing to salsa music. They were horrified, so they ran back downstairs. It is still unknown if the teachers were aware of how their secret was exposed.
Vanessa: That’s it for the tour today. Please join our show next week when we will explore ...
On November 10th my group and I got together to quickly make a podcast. With Halloween just passed we had all been watching a bunch of scary movies- which made for a very interesting topic choice. We each wrote a short paragraph about areas of the school portraying them as a place with a haunting story that has to do with a boy named earnest. Katherine wrote about the room 666, Adam wrote about the elevator, Cara wrote about the rooftop, Vanessa wrote about the laundry room, and I wrote about the tunnel that connects S and R building. The script was really fun to write because the group all had very similar ideas, and very similar senses of humour, and because it had to do with horror and make-believe. We wanted to create a myth for the residence buildings to interest the students who live in residence. It’s thrilling to think about the place you living having a haunting persona. There was a couple times where we found it hard to stay on topic because our imaginations ran off with us.
Cara and Vanessa are smarter with technology so we let them do the recording for the podcast- although we were all present for the recording in case we felt like we needed any revising done. Then we put it into an mp3 in real podcast form.
Podcast Tour of Humber College Residence, formerly the Rexdale School for Boys
RECORDING SCRIPT (effects will be added to the real mp3)
Vanessa: There is one recorded fatality at the Rexdale School for Boys. His name was Earnest, and he was 13 years old. He lived in Room 666, and he was liked by all his peers. He was discovered in his room slumped over his bureau with his history textbooks open. Cause of death: Homework Overload.
Cara: We’re here now at the Rexdale School for Boys today, now known as Humber North College Residence, where we are going to be leading a tour. Please stay with us as we venture through the tunnel that has an unknown history to the students who live here now.
Vanessa: The tunnel, which connects S building to the rest of the residence, was built over a fire pitt which students would use to burn all of their work at the end of the school year. To this day, some students say that they can feel what they can only describe as a hot spot as they pass through the tunnel.
The laundry room was used as the detention room back when it was a board school. Rumor has it that sometimes kids were made to stay in the detention room for over 24 hours. Some students would smuggle in small games to play to help pass the time. Ghosts are said to be seen in the laundry room and jacks have been found in the corner of the room.
Cara: Back when the building was for the Rexdale School for boys, the elevator was only supposed to be used by the cleaning maids and teachers. Some boys that were risky enough snuck into it regularly, just for the thrill of breaking the rules. Often they would ride up to the roof and look out over the landscape, usually a sunset or sunrise. Lets take a look up there now and find out what we can see.
Currently from the roof you can see the other residence buildings, the daycare centre, Hwy 27, and the Humber and Guelph-Humber buildings. At the time of the Rexdale School, most of this area wasn’t developed, so there was really nothing to see except a dirt path and a few trees. But the view wasn’t the only reason to go up to the roof. Professors used the roof as an illegal zone...they smoked and drank like there was no tomorrow. They assumed that no students would see them. However, Earnest and some friends went up to the roof one night, and they found their three teachers drunk, dancing to salsa music. They were horrified, so they ran back downstairs. It is still unknown if the teachers were aware of how their secret was exposed.
Vanessa: That’s it for the tour today. Please join our show next week when we will explore ...
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Sight For Sore Eyes
Image Curation
The Image Curation project was tough to get started. We had a difficult time picking out what we wanted to do for our slideshow, but once we decided the ball got rolling and we finished within hours. We ‘danced’ around ideas like strange book titles, children’s drawings, and shapes but finally decided on the theme of glasses. We began our search for glasses and found that a lot of the search results that came up were of images of glasses or sunglasses on celebrities. I found even when I went online and looked for certain businesses photo’s they were all promoting sunglasses on celebrities and how to steal their style- like they were the most important and even the center of everyone’s daily life. Celebrities have been made into people whom we envy and want to be like. It’s almost as though, we are not seeing the world unless it is through their eyes, their beliefs, and values. My group and I got together the next day and we discussed how we all had noticed how glamorized their lifestyle has been made and used this as inspiration. So each of the members got together and searched for 10-15 pictures each with celebrities wearing glasses and making them look beautiful. At the end, we have the few very harsh, sad photos of children in third world countries wearing glasses that are made of paper, or straw and tape. This we thought examined a political aspect showing that just because you see something all the time portrayed in a certain way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way that it can be presented.
I was having a hard time looking at these photographs from a semiotic point of view so I called up Cara and asked her for her assistance. She discussed a couple things with me including the notion of poverty being accepted in today’s society, as well as the obvious sexual appeal that is portrayed by the celebrities.
The pictures we chose were all of celebrities wearing glasses, or sunglasses and in every shot (correction, almost every shot) the celebrity wearing the glasses was shown in a very beautiful pose, with a huge smile or sexy smirk. The most sexual of the photographs were those used to actually sell the sunglasses. “When an image occurs in an advertisement, we assume that it is there to help sell a product, as by depicting an instance of someone enjoying possession and consumption of the product. Thus we have in these standard deployments of text and image the harmonious relations of explication (by text) and illustration (by image)” (Dillon 1). This only suggests just what we have been told and shown for years, sex sells. However, sex is not the only thing being used to sell glasses. Celebrities are shown wearing them –They are shown being strong, beautiful, rich, and everything that you want, or want to be. They use people’s envy to lure them into buying the glasses by showing them how happy they can be, how successful they could be, how beautiful... if they only bought the glasses. This is discussed in John Bergers Ways of Seeing.
The very end picture that Cara had found was that of a little boy wearing home-made glasses. They were bent out of shape, made of straw and tape. The boy looked as though he was a young refugee and he looked as though he did not have much. Much alike the celebrities shown he seemed to be very content, regardless of the fact that he may not have as much money or power. Unlike the celebrities we do not envy him, but because of his smile and what appears to be an unbroken spirit we accept him. His poverty is saddening but we also accept that because we have been a witness to poverty for years. There is no shock value in poverty anymore, and I feel less inclined to help out because I know there are hundreds of other people out there already doing so much for the poor. We see it every day in our own country (there are families that are too poor to even feed their own children). This is what is meant by poverty being accepted in today’s society.
Here is our slideshow;
(to be added)
Dillon, George L. "Art and the Semiotics of Images: Three Questions About Visual Meaning." 1 Dec. 2000. Washington University. 24 Nov. 2007.
The Image Curation project was tough to get started. We had a difficult time picking out what we wanted to do for our slideshow, but once we decided the ball got rolling and we finished within hours. We ‘danced’ around ideas like strange book titles, children’s drawings, and shapes but finally decided on the theme of glasses. We began our search for glasses and found that a lot of the search results that came up were of images of glasses or sunglasses on celebrities. I found even when I went online and looked for certain businesses photo’s they were all promoting sunglasses on celebrities and how to steal their style- like they were the most important and even the center of everyone’s daily life. Celebrities have been made into people whom we envy and want to be like. It’s almost as though, we are not seeing the world unless it is through their eyes, their beliefs, and values. My group and I got together the next day and we discussed how we all had noticed how glamorized their lifestyle has been made and used this as inspiration. So each of the members got together and searched for 10-15 pictures each with celebrities wearing glasses and making them look beautiful. At the end, we have the few very harsh, sad photos of children in third world countries wearing glasses that are made of paper, or straw and tape. This we thought examined a political aspect showing that just because you see something all the time portrayed in a certain way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way that it can be presented.
I was having a hard time looking at these photographs from a semiotic point of view so I called up Cara and asked her for her assistance. She discussed a couple things with me including the notion of poverty being accepted in today’s society, as well as the obvious sexual appeal that is portrayed by the celebrities.
The pictures we chose were all of celebrities wearing glasses, or sunglasses and in every shot (correction, almost every shot) the celebrity wearing the glasses was shown in a very beautiful pose, with a huge smile or sexy smirk. The most sexual of the photographs were those used to actually sell the sunglasses. “When an image occurs in an advertisement, we assume that it is there to help sell a product, as by depicting an instance of someone enjoying possession and consumption of the product. Thus we have in these standard deployments of text and image the harmonious relations of explication (by text) and illustration (by image)” (Dillon 1). This only suggests just what we have been told and shown for years, sex sells. However, sex is not the only thing being used to sell glasses. Celebrities are shown wearing them –They are shown being strong, beautiful, rich, and everything that you want, or want to be. They use people’s envy to lure them into buying the glasses by showing them how happy they can be, how successful they could be, how beautiful... if they only bought the glasses. This is discussed in John Bergers Ways of Seeing.
The very end picture that Cara had found was that of a little boy wearing home-made glasses. They were bent out of shape, made of straw and tape. The boy looked as though he was a young refugee and he looked as though he did not have much. Much alike the celebrities shown he seemed to be very content, regardless of the fact that he may not have as much money or power. Unlike the celebrities we do not envy him, but because of his smile and what appears to be an unbroken spirit we accept him. His poverty is saddening but we also accept that because we have been a witness to poverty for years. There is no shock value in poverty anymore, and I feel less inclined to help out because I know there are hundreds of other people out there already doing so much for the poor. We see it every day in our own country (there are families that are too poor to even feed their own children). This is what is meant by poverty being accepted in today’s society.
Here is our slideshow;
(to be added)
Dillon, George L. "Art and the Semiotics of Images: Three Questions About Visual Meaning." 1 Dec. 2000. Washington University. 24 Nov. 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Lisa Goulet; Serious Activist with a Loud Message
Activist Project
In the beginning we had huge hopes and giant goals for our activist project including an overnight sleep/walk like the children in Northern Uganda, and three or more screenings of the documentary Invisible Children which is what inspired our Activist Project. When my group and I found out that booking the common room was going to take more time and effort than we had available we brainstormed for some new ideas on how to get the word out. We decided on the pay-it forward approach just like the three boys who had made the documentary Invisible Children. Each member of my group had made a replica of the DVD and showed it to at least one individual. We would then leave them with the DVD in hopes that they would burn a copy of their own and let the word out. I personally wanted to show more than one person so I made 6 copies and chose carefully who I would show it to. I brainstormed who I knew would not only be interested in viewing the documentary (so I wouldn’t bore them beyond any belief, I wanted their full attention) but I paid close attention to the type of person they were and how likely they were to pass on the message. The chosen where both my younger sisters, there is no one more like myself than the people I am closest with. To be able to show them I went home for the weekend and sat them down. Emily 16, and Danielle Goulet 14, were my first test subjects. We viewed the documentary later in the evening as I thought the timing was the most appropriate (not to early that they would be too tired and uninterested, not after lunch when they may be feeling full and groggy, and defiantly not before supper when we would all be starving to death. Although, I thought it may help them relate to the subjects in the documentary, I am not that cruel.) Their reactions were what I had expected, Emily the sentimental cried her eyes out and Danielle the serious talked about how unfair it seemed. They both spoke about how they felt they were extremely lucky to have been not only born into the country they were born into but the family. We are pretty well off and they realized how much we have been taking advantage of the fact that we’ve never had to work for money or food the way the children and adults of Northern Uganda. The guilt felt was enough to bring us to tears and silence. Danielle was the first to speak up “It’s weird, I would have never even thought about people in Africa in that way- I’ve always separated the lifestyles of those overseas and those here. Just like the boys in the documentary asked, I want to know why”.
The second group of people I showed was one of my best friends from Goderich whom I have been best friends with since I was in second grade Belinda Carter, her boyfriend Justin and my boyfriend (now ex) Kevin were also present. The setting was a bit different as we were getting together for a few drinks and so we were all a bit more heartfelt. The guys were not too much help, as they did not have much to say- but Belinda as always, was anything but a letdown. Although we all felt bad for them, and had sympathy she opened up an argument I never even thought of. “Would the people in Northern Uganda even know it was wrong to be starving, wrong to be in these constant fights or wrong to be uneducated had Americans, Canadians, or any other first class country gone over there and told them it was not right? Or would they think of it as life, think that is how we are supposed to live?” Her point made me think. I would like to believe that in a way life for them may have been better had we not interrupted their lifestyles so they could come to terms with it. However, I do not believe that love for your family members, and the need for food and water could ever be thought of as a good thing whether you know differently or not. If they lost someone close to them or in their family they will still miss them, because the unconditional love still exists.
I had one CD left. I thought long and hard about who I wanted to show it to. I then remembered that two of my newer friends that lived in residence had both once lived in Africa, Sarah West and Hector Mateer. I called them up and asked if they had at most an hour to spare out of their days and sure enough like any good friend the response I got was “anything for you Lisa Goulet”. Thirty minutes or so we met up and I showed them the video. After a couple moments of silence I asked what they thought. Both agreed it was possibly the saddest thing in the world, but they simply could not relate. They told me not all of Africa is like that. Parts of it have more beauty than they have ever seen anywhere else they have been in the world. They told me about all the good they have in their culture and how strongly Africans believe in their religions. They told me about the fun things that happened there, and they were slightly saddened that videos of all the starving children, and beaten people are being shown because it puts a bad name to the country. It makes people scared and too uncomfortable to go there and that affects the country’s economy in a bad way. Although, they appreciated the fact that there are people trying to help the ugly parts of the country and help out where it is needed. They agreed that overall the kids who made the documentary are doing a wonderful thing. “I just want for the world to understand there is more to Africa than death and poverty. Maybe one day, even in the bad parts, it will be like that.”
I asked them if they had any ideas how I could send the word out further more and they just told me to think of all the means of communication I have nowadays that we never had before and to take advantage of it. Brilliant! Immediately I accessed Google and searched Invisible Children to see if I could find the Documentary online as I remembered it was when I viewed the documentary the first time. When I found it I added the link into an email and wrote a short little spiel about why I would like them to take the time to view the documentary, and what I was sending it to them for. I sent this e-mail to everyone on my entire e-mail list which includes more than 300 people. I got a 35% response statistic which is amazing. That means at least 100 people viewed and responded! Responses varied from “That is the saddest thing I have ever seen” to “What can I do”. I was more than happy to let anyone who was interested about the invisible children website which has more than enough information and donation tools ex. purchasing a bracelet made by the Ugandans.
Overall, I know that I was successful in getting the word out. I may not have raised any money for their cause (which I know was not part of the project – I just had bigger dreams), but I raised a lot of awareness. Before I wrote this I called up the 7 people that I showed personally and asked if they had shown the DVD to anyone else. My sisters had their entire dance class come over to their house including a few of their close friends and watched it for their weekly “Monday Night Movie Night”. Belinda gave the DVD to her parents, because they are really into helping out with world issues. And Hector and Sarah did not do anything, slightly disappointing, but expected. I am very glad we chose the approach we did because I feel I got to more people than I would have had we only done screenings. I feel this is a unique way of getting the word out because it isn’t exactly mass media; however, I used several means of mass communication and mass media to get the word out so in a way it is.
In the beginning we had huge hopes and giant goals for our activist project including an overnight sleep/walk like the children in Northern Uganda, and three or more screenings of the documentary Invisible Children which is what inspired our Activist Project. When my group and I found out that booking the common room was going to take more time and effort than we had available we brainstormed for some new ideas on how to get the word out. We decided on the pay-it forward approach just like the three boys who had made the documentary Invisible Children. Each member of my group had made a replica of the DVD and showed it to at least one individual. We would then leave them with the DVD in hopes that they would burn a copy of their own and let the word out. I personally wanted to show more than one person so I made 6 copies and chose carefully who I would show it to. I brainstormed who I knew would not only be interested in viewing the documentary (so I wouldn’t bore them beyond any belief, I wanted their full attention) but I paid close attention to the type of person they were and how likely they were to pass on the message. The chosen where both my younger sisters, there is no one more like myself than the people I am closest with. To be able to show them I went home for the weekend and sat them down. Emily 16, and Danielle Goulet 14, were my first test subjects. We viewed the documentary later in the evening as I thought the timing was the most appropriate (not to early that they would be too tired and uninterested, not after lunch when they may be feeling full and groggy, and defiantly not before supper when we would all be starving to death. Although, I thought it may help them relate to the subjects in the documentary, I am not that cruel.) Their reactions were what I had expected, Emily the sentimental cried her eyes out and Danielle the serious talked about how unfair it seemed. They both spoke about how they felt they were extremely lucky to have been not only born into the country they were born into but the family. We are pretty well off and they realized how much we have been taking advantage of the fact that we’ve never had to work for money or food the way the children and adults of Northern Uganda. The guilt felt was enough to bring us to tears and silence. Danielle was the first to speak up “It’s weird, I would have never even thought about people in Africa in that way- I’ve always separated the lifestyles of those overseas and those here. Just like the boys in the documentary asked, I want to know why”.
The second group of people I showed was one of my best friends from Goderich whom I have been best friends with since I was in second grade Belinda Carter, her boyfriend Justin and my boyfriend (now ex) Kevin were also present. The setting was a bit different as we were getting together for a few drinks and so we were all a bit more heartfelt. The guys were not too much help, as they did not have much to say- but Belinda as always, was anything but a letdown. Although we all felt bad for them, and had sympathy she opened up an argument I never even thought of. “Would the people in Northern Uganda even know it was wrong to be starving, wrong to be in these constant fights or wrong to be uneducated had Americans, Canadians, or any other first class country gone over there and told them it was not right? Or would they think of it as life, think that is how we are supposed to live?” Her point made me think. I would like to believe that in a way life for them may have been better had we not interrupted their lifestyles so they could come to terms with it. However, I do not believe that love for your family members, and the need for food and water could ever be thought of as a good thing whether you know differently or not. If they lost someone close to them or in their family they will still miss them, because the unconditional love still exists.
I had one CD left. I thought long and hard about who I wanted to show it to. I then remembered that two of my newer friends that lived in residence had both once lived in Africa, Sarah West and Hector Mateer. I called them up and asked if they had at most an hour to spare out of their days and sure enough like any good friend the response I got was “anything for you Lisa Goulet”. Thirty minutes or so we met up and I showed them the video. After a couple moments of silence I asked what they thought. Both agreed it was possibly the saddest thing in the world, but they simply could not relate. They told me not all of Africa is like that. Parts of it have more beauty than they have ever seen anywhere else they have been in the world. They told me about all the good they have in their culture and how strongly Africans believe in their religions. They told me about the fun things that happened there, and they were slightly saddened that videos of all the starving children, and beaten people are being shown because it puts a bad name to the country. It makes people scared and too uncomfortable to go there and that affects the country’s economy in a bad way. Although, they appreciated the fact that there are people trying to help the ugly parts of the country and help out where it is needed. They agreed that overall the kids who made the documentary are doing a wonderful thing. “I just want for the world to understand there is more to Africa than death and poverty. Maybe one day, even in the bad parts, it will be like that.”
I asked them if they had any ideas how I could send the word out further more and they just told me to think of all the means of communication I have nowadays that we never had before and to take advantage of it. Brilliant! Immediately I accessed Google and searched Invisible Children to see if I could find the Documentary online as I remembered it was when I viewed the documentary the first time. When I found it I added the link into an email and wrote a short little spiel about why I would like them to take the time to view the documentary, and what I was sending it to them for. I sent this e-mail to everyone on my entire e-mail list which includes more than 300 people. I got a 35% response statistic which is amazing. That means at least 100 people viewed and responded! Responses varied from “That is the saddest thing I have ever seen” to “What can I do”. I was more than happy to let anyone who was interested about the invisible children website which has more than enough information and donation tools ex. purchasing a bracelet made by the Ugandans.
Overall, I know that I was successful in getting the word out. I may not have raised any money for their cause (which I know was not part of the project – I just had bigger dreams), but I raised a lot of awareness. Before I wrote this I called up the 7 people that I showed personally and asked if they had shown the DVD to anyone else. My sisters had their entire dance class come over to their house including a few of their close friends and watched it for their weekly “Monday Night Movie Night”. Belinda gave the DVD to her parents, because they are really into helping out with world issues. And Hector and Sarah did not do anything, slightly disappointing, but expected. I am very glad we chose the approach we did because I feel I got to more people than I would have had we only done screenings. I feel this is a unique way of getting the word out because it isn’t exactly mass media; however, I used several means of mass communication and mass media to get the word out so in a way it is.
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