Last summer I had a job working for CD plus in the Suncoast mall located in Goderich Ontario. The store closed down shortly after I had quit working there. I thought maybe it was because Goderich in general is slowly decreasing in population and that there simply was just not enough means to keep the store going. It was not a surprise.
More recently, I noticed that the Music World in the mall had been closed down, and later found out that Music World had declared bankruptcy. Music World is the last Canadian owned music store, and it's 79 plus stores across the country will all be closing down in the next month or so putting more than 650 employees out of work. On top of that the franchise has lost over $9 million dollars in the past year alone.
http://videos.canoe.ca/index.jsp?auto_band=x&rf=sv&fr_story=FRdamp228625
This is a link to a short news cast by the Toronto Sun discussing the Music World Bankruptcy.
So why the massive decrease in record sales? If you don't know at least one answer to this question I will ask you where have you been the past couple decades. Music Industries want to blame piracy, and why not? More and more people are downloading music with programs such as limewire, or paying cheaper prices for CD's online with iTunes, because it is more convenient than trekking to the Cd store. Critics however, are pointing the finger at over pricing and poor quality of products and bad marketing tactics. An Mp3 doesn't scratch, iPod's don't skip, and neither of them take up half the space in your room due to an over abundance of cases. An added perk is once downloaded your computer automatically lists it alphabetically leaving you with more time to do other more important things, as well as saving you time on having to search hours to hear that song you've had in your head all day. Music stores just can not compete with the convenience or prices of downloading.
I would like to argue however, that the entertainment industry seems to be the only industry that does not change with their market, when they first realize it is changing on them. When other businesses (for example Tim Hortons- selling more than coffee and donuts, supporting a vast variety of foods and broadening their market) see that their market needs a change and they change with it.
Although I must give credit where it is due, as HMV (a British store, also the biggest chain in the country) has already started slowly moving away from pitching Cd's and is looking more into the growing industry of DVD sales, and video games. Although Cd sales have been decreasing rapidly, the number of households with DVD players has tripled over the past 5 years. In 2001, DVD sales went from 313 million to 1.1 billion. Similarly, the number of households that have broadband Internet connections has quadrupled! That is an extra $30 dollars a month spent on Internet connections, as well as another $10 million in DVD sales- you could only assume that there has to be a cut in entertainment spending somewhere, and music is the easiest and fastest to obtain for free.
(For more statistics visit http://mpaa.org/researchStatistics.asp , p 51)
Businesses will continue to be a successful if they continue to expand and grow with technology, taking full advantage of it opposed to blaming it for loss of sales. For example, recently HMV has mentioned a shift toward more of an online presence, kind of like iTunes. I wish them the best of luck.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Take a sip of this, take that... Don't it feel good baby
Recently one of my friends-friends just died of an Ecstasy overdose. As well as, someone I know very well.. *shifty eyes* almost died and was hospitalized from it after trying it for her first time. It's just strange how we ignore all the warnings we are given in the media, and from family, and teachers - when we try it anyways and think "oh - but that wont happen to me".
Oddly enough, I've been really interested in reading books where the characters have some sort of addiction. I read through pages of how they got started, how they got hooked, and the struggles they go through as an addict. These books don't necessarily glorify drugs, and in some parts they scare me to wits end. Yet, I still feel compelled to read more, compelled to find out more about the drugs, and yes, maybe a little interested in what the high must actually feel like for people to become so addicted to them. Luckily, I am smart enough not to get into it.
The three books I've read this year are Crank by Ellen Hopkins (beautiful), Millions of Little Pieces by James Frey(Horrifying), and Party Monster by James St. James (depressing, and MESSED UP). Each book touches both the good and the bad of drug addictions. The bad , is a given- you become less of a person, the hazard on your health, the danger in a bad hit / bad trip, death, the financial strain resulting in prostitution's and theft, and the over all need. Frey's story was the most touching, and I felt best depicted what it was like inside the mind of a drug addict who had done anything (including sniffing glue) to get away from problems, in reality, only spiralling farther down the rabbit hole. After I finished reading these three novels I felt extremely interested in what makes people start to do drugs, and what the media and government has done to prevent, and in some cases, glorify the usage of illegal/prescription drugs.
Ever since the late 1930's there has been an awareness of drugs becoming popular. Video's were created by the government used as propaganda to prevent the usage of drugs such as LSD and Marijuana among the younger crowds.
Such as this film created in 1938 titled Reefer Madness. This film was made to show the effects of marijuana. I think that the film went slightly overboard, and as a result was looked at as more of a joke ( as most other propaganda films made in the 50's and 60's
Online Videos by Veoh.com
(http://listverse.com/politics/top-10-propaganda-videos/). Presently , if you are one watching these films, it's something I found most students would do while they were high as entertainment.
A couple years ago George W. Bush had gotten himself into some hot water when he tried to release a new version of an Anti-drug video. The Accountability Office(an investigative arm of Congress) had stated "that the Bush administration violated federal law by producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.
The accountability office said the videos "constitute covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, which were distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy"(Files 1). I questioned the reasoning's of why the Accountability Offices would be upset about an anti-drug video only to find it was because Bush was using tax payers money to create these video's and that the making of 'mock news segments' broke a fundamental principal of an open-government.
There is other legal action that has been taking place in the war against drugs. For example, making it illegal. Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana get treated the same in the Narcotic control act, however talks of legalizing marijuana have been brought up a few times. There is a lot of good and bad responses to the idea including "personal use should be tied to a national drug strategy that promotes awareness and prevention, and provides for comprehensive treatment." (Munroe 2) and "marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs ,
decriminalization would send conflicting messages to young people, and
concern expressed by U.S. drug enforcement officials that relaxing Canadian marijuana laws would increase the likelihood of more marijuana flowing south across the border and could make efforts to secure the Canada-U.S. border more difficult." (Munroe 2) (For more information on Canada's drug law visit http://www.cfdp.ca/drug.htm , or http://www.cfdp.ca/sen8ex1.htm).
It still has not been legalized and the punishments are still quite severe- Depending on what you had done and how much you had in your possession the charge could be up to 10 years in jail, and a fine of $2000 dollars.
Something that had been brought to my attention while researching Canada's and America's drug laws was a couple articles talking about celebrities and celebrity drug scandals. Headlines included Kate Moss, Brittany Spears, Whitney Houston, and of course Lindsay Lohan. The glorification of drugs in young Hollywood made by these girls I find could be dangerous to the young public who views them as idols. There is enough pressure on kids without having to watch there favourite young celebrity getting in some trouble with their agencies ( Kate Moss almost loosing several contracts when she was outed as a cocaine addict), the law ( Whitney Houston being charged for the possession of cocaine and other illegal substances), and the tabloids (Brittany spears and Kevin- neglection of the kids. broken marriage, as well as alcohol and prescription drug abuse). It is interesting to see however the elitism celebrities get when it comes to possession and the use of narcotics. Take for example this past August when Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to do a single day in jail for drug possession and a drinking and driving charge. She was released within 84 minutes upon entering, where anyone else with the same charge would be getting 10 years plus. Two other very popular instances where with Nicole Richie's 4 day sentence for driving under the influence of drugs- and being let free after an hour and 20 minutes. Also, Paris Hilton's being let free after 3 days of being in jail, when her sentence was 45 days! I do not feel that this is a good impression to be made on people. This is not only outrageous, it makes a mockery of the judicial system.
Young Hollywood has not been the first and will most likely not be the last in the glorification of hard drugs. In the past photographers used the underground heroin scene to sell jeans for Calvin Klein. Today, the photographers exploit celebrities rehab situations to sell magazines. There is a huge profit to be made in drug addictions, eating disorders, and sex scandals. Why would we do anything about it? *roll eyes*
Oddly enough, I've been really interested in reading books where the characters have some sort of addiction. I read through pages of how they got started, how they got hooked, and the struggles they go through as an addict. These books don't necessarily glorify drugs, and in some parts they scare me to wits end. Yet, I still feel compelled to read more, compelled to find out more about the drugs, and yes, maybe a little interested in what the high must actually feel like for people to become so addicted to them. Luckily, I am smart enough not to get into it.
The three books I've read this year are Crank by Ellen Hopkins (beautiful), Millions of Little Pieces by James Frey(Horrifying), and Party Monster by James St. James (depressing, and MESSED UP). Each book touches both the good and the bad of drug addictions. The bad , is a given- you become less of a person, the hazard on your health, the danger in a bad hit / bad trip, death, the financial strain resulting in prostitution's and theft, and the over all need. Frey's story was the most touching, and I felt best depicted what it was like inside the mind of a drug addict who had done anything (including sniffing glue) to get away from problems, in reality, only spiralling farther down the rabbit hole. After I finished reading these three novels I felt extremely interested in what makes people start to do drugs, and what the media and government has done to prevent, and in some cases, glorify the usage of illegal/prescription drugs.
Ever since the late 1930's there has been an awareness of drugs becoming popular. Video's were created by the government used as propaganda to prevent the usage of drugs such as LSD and Marijuana among the younger crowds.
Such as this film created in 1938 titled Reefer Madness. This film was made to show the effects of marijuana. I think that the film went slightly overboard, and as a result was looked at as more of a joke ( as most other propaganda films made in the 50's and 60's
Online Videos by Veoh.com
(http://listverse.com/politics/top-10-propaganda-videos/). Presently , if you are one watching these films, it's something I found most students would do while they were high as entertainment.
A couple years ago George W. Bush had gotten himself into some hot water when he tried to release a new version of an Anti-drug video. The Accountability Office(an investigative arm of Congress) had stated "that the Bush administration violated federal law by producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.
The accountability office said the videos "constitute covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, which were distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy"(Files 1). I questioned the reasoning's of why the Accountability Offices would be upset about an anti-drug video only to find it was because Bush was using tax payers money to create these video's and that the making of 'mock news segments' broke a fundamental principal of an open-government.
There is other legal action that has been taking place in the war against drugs. For example, making it illegal. Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana get treated the same in the Narcotic control act, however talks of legalizing marijuana have been brought up a few times. There is a lot of good and bad responses to the idea including "personal use should be tied to a national drug strategy that promotes awareness and prevention, and provides for comprehensive treatment." (Munroe 2) and "marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs ,
decriminalization would send conflicting messages to young people, and
concern expressed by U.S. drug enforcement officials that relaxing Canadian marijuana laws would increase the likelihood of more marijuana flowing south across the border and could make efforts to secure the Canada-U.S. border more difficult." (Munroe 2) (For more information on Canada's drug law visit http://www.cfdp.ca/drug.htm , or http://www.cfdp.ca/sen8ex1.htm).
It still has not been legalized and the punishments are still quite severe- Depending on what you had done and how much you had in your possession the charge could be up to 10 years in jail, and a fine of $2000 dollars.
Something that had been brought to my attention while researching Canada's and America's drug laws was a couple articles talking about celebrities and celebrity drug scandals. Headlines included Kate Moss, Brittany Spears, Whitney Houston, and of course Lindsay Lohan. The glorification of drugs in young Hollywood made by these girls I find could be dangerous to the young public who views them as idols. There is enough pressure on kids without having to watch there favourite young celebrity getting in some trouble with their agencies ( Kate Moss almost loosing several contracts when she was outed as a cocaine addict), the law ( Whitney Houston being charged for the possession of cocaine and other illegal substances), and the tabloids (Brittany spears and Kevin- neglection of the kids. broken marriage, as well as alcohol and prescription drug abuse). It is interesting to see however the elitism celebrities get when it comes to possession and the use of narcotics. Take for example this past August when Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to do a single day in jail for drug possession and a drinking and driving charge. She was released within 84 minutes upon entering, where anyone else with the same charge would be getting 10 years plus. Two other very popular instances where with Nicole Richie's 4 day sentence for driving under the influence of drugs- and being let free after an hour and 20 minutes. Also, Paris Hilton's being let free after 3 days of being in jail, when her sentence was 45 days! I do not feel that this is a good impression to be made on people. This is not only outrageous, it makes a mockery of the judicial system.
Young Hollywood has not been the first and will most likely not be the last in the glorification of hard drugs. In the past photographers used the underground heroin scene to sell jeans for Calvin Klein. Today, the photographers exploit celebrities rehab situations to sell magazines. There is a huge profit to be made in drug addictions, eating disorders, and sex scandals. Why would we do anything about it? *roll eyes*
School Girl Crush
HAHAHAHA I completely forgot about being a total creeper in class with my BUILT IN WEBCAM!!!!
How unappropriate. haha
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 ...
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