BATMANS CAVE OF THOUGHT WONDERS

SMRT Einstein

rumtumtugger — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 02:48:53 +0000

This bird is awesome:

Some More Smart Animals:

Bi-pedal dog!!! I cant believe it!!

He he he funny

rumtumtugger — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 02:44:21 +0000

Animals are better than you…. it will make you giggle:

Second thoughts about being a carnivore

rumtumtugger — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:48:25 +0000

I know there is no longer any writing for class… but this is the only place I know I can post youtube videos… and I’ve connected it to my facebook account.

I will warn people, I have stopped eating meat after seeing this:

AADAC perhaps needs a gamers rehab?!

rumtumtugger — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:25:01 +0000

Yes, I was once a gamer, and yes, I am female. My gaming history looks something like this (note how it was all driven by my brothers influence). First Ninetendo came out, my brother and I (I think I was 6 or something at the time) shared half the cost of it. I never did make it competly to the end, but did watch my brother make it many times. Super Nintendo, once again we split the cost and played it to no end. N64 my brother bought and I played, I prided myself in being able to beat my friends in Mario Kart and Bond playing with my feet. Then along came something called warcraft,… the first version. I first only watched my brother play. So I played warcraft until the expansion pack when everything changed, and it was more of an individual quest than creating your city and concuring the other cities. It required too much time and too much planning, it wasen’t fun anymore.

This is the first level of my back-in-the-day Warcraft:

So I dont really fit into the “non-gamer” category, like my mother who was hopeless at warcraft as she only wanted to build up gold reserves and get her peons to cut trees, and then she would be attacked and die. But I do no longer consider myself a gamer, especially to todays standards. Recently I have been thrust back into the gaming world via my boyfriend and his addict friends.

In my effort to understand gaming, I have thought about this topic sociologically, perhaps more than another would. I know that when in a guild there is immense pressure to be online at least once a day taking down some big boss so a cool sword, or knee pad, or wrist pad can drop, and then your ‘guy’ is just that much cooler. I tend to wonder why it matters what your arm guard looks like, but I can only infer that to the people in the game, they can somehow recognize that that is a positive thing, and therefore assign value to it. It is what Jakobsson and Tayler wrote about, that gaming has its own language and community to learn. They write about how groups are essentia for achieving success. So gamers must create social networks online and interact with real people.

So why do I have a problem with this? I wonder why gamers must hide behind a distorted, exaggerated character online, instead of interacting with their RL (real life) friends. I also wonder if their online characters become the only thing they feel sufficently valued in, and that is why they spend so much time on it. I also have a hard time (as I stated before) valueing the time and effort devoted to getting better ‘things’ for their ‘fake’ character.

I do acknowledge that leisure time is to be spent how you want. But I believe these new games are taking on a new dimension, where people are addicted and shirk other responsibilities to spend time with their game.

Bengal Tiger

rumtumtugger — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:25:55 +0000

So I was looking at the Bengal Tiger, and to my astoneshment, I learned there really is no such thing as a Bengal Tiger. They are only created by severe in-breeding. 80% of the offspring does not survive. I guess this only pertains to Media in the sense that these people are punishing these animals for monetary gain, and that this fact has been hidden from the general public. Its like what I spoke about in my last blog, just because there is a demand for it, doesn’t mean that that demand has to be filled, especially when it is at the expense of others.

Go to http://www.bigcatrescue.org/white_tigers.htm for more information, I had no idea! So don’t visit a zoo with a Bengal tiger!

CAUTION!!! EXPLICIT RANTING!

rumtumtugger — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:23:08 +0000

I found Tiffany Boulton very intersting. I like how she emphasized that women with healthy, functional breasts perceive their breasts as defective. Often, I suppose they actually make their breasts defective by augmenting them. I walked down the Red Mile stone sober, and I was very suprised to see how many women there were flashing their breasts, sometimes to no audience. In this case and others, is it women who are perpretrating their own negative of themselves.

So a split infinitive classically (I guess) is To boldly go where no man has gone before!

The infinitive is to go, and it has been ‘split’ by the adverb boldly. Split infinitives have been the cause of much controversy among teachers and grammarians, but the notion that they are ungrammatical is simply a myth: in his famous book Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler listed them among ‘superstitions’! This is from http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/splitinfin

What immediatly stuck with me from the documentary was “who is watching this and why?”. For example who wants to watch a woman being raped, see someone have sex with a child, or an innocent animal being raped? Why is there demand for this? What really scared me about the rape scene, is its not just one guy watching it, and getting pleasure from it. Many are! And by putting it on video I think it almost legitimizes the act, making it okay to be turned on by hurting and scaring a woman. It scares me that that is so many mens (or womens) fantasies. The woman who was directing the rape scene who named herself “Lizzie Borden” of Lizzie who murdered both her parents… I suppose is your first sign that she is not stable, and also violent. She didn’t even tell her best friend that she was going to be beaten and ‘killed’. And it was okay because they would go for dinner and buy a purse afterwards. Nice.

Porn also degrades women to a severe degree. I think it is mainly men who are watching/buying/downloadingit, so they want to see the man in a powerful role, I suppose. These women are being cheapen and belittled with whips, chains, anal intercourse… and many un-namable things, for little money. If the industry is making Billions of dollars and the actors are getting paid $1000.00 generally, it casts women down again. But, if one person doesn’t do it, someone else will. Once again, we have an example of women perpretrating their own negative self-image. The woman we saw in the video that was going to have anal intercourse for the first time.. WITH 6 MEN… also disturbs me. There really is no pleasureful reason for a woman to have anal intercourse, on the contrary, there are many medical reasons not to… I’ll leave it at that.

I just wish there were more postive images………… generally.

Gay Survivor.. gay vs. straight? ooooo

rumtumtugger — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 02:02:11 +0000

I have been a big fan of survivor for a while, although I did stop watching after the all-stars survivor with Rupert and all. When I heard about the twist survivor was putting on, I was appalled and shocked. Then, at my work they have a survivor pool, which I put $5 into. Having watched the entire season of the racially devided survivor, I think it was handled well. I think it ended up suggesting, as Jonathan said (something like) ‘it has proved that who we ally and get along with has to do with personality and not colour’… like the article said, they are “smart enough not to make it negative.” But it also was an opportunity to have different races represented in a real fashion, with real people being themselves (in an extreme situation).

If you watch towards the end, they make some comments on the race factor on survivor:

Oh man, this challenge was intense, I’m not sure the people who designed this thought it would get this rough:

Thinking about the article on “Should gay people seek to cultivate representations of a unified gay identity in the media, or is it counterproductive?” I wonder how the gay community could do that. How could a vast group of people ‘decide’ on one identity. I think it would be insulting to many, and un-needed. Am I the only one that is unaware that all other groups have one identity. I just can’t think of the ONE identity for any group. Perhaps I am uneducated in that area?

I’m a roach!

rumtumtugger — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:16:38 +0000

Favourite quotes from Wednesday’s lecture are, “You will never have a hummer” and my hope for my future is … ”…to date a hot prof” also “Consumers are like roaches, you can spray and spray them and they will get more immune”

I found it very intersting to look at some commercials I wouldn’t normally ask “what is being sold” and then apply them to our lives. I really do think the Dove commercials are a good thing. Sure, they are selling a product, but it is a good product and a good message. I did find the American Eagle? campaign about the end of the world/ Global warming disturbing. I look at some ads, and think, “was there no one in the board room saying, this is a bad idea?”

So is anyone else fretting that we have to hand in our papers next (next) Wednesday? I am. But once I’m done everything will be hunky dori!!

Colbert Report

rumtumtugger — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:22:10 +0000

I am a big fan of the Daily Show, and the Colbert report. Steven Colbert did a presentation at the White House’s Correspondents Association Dinner. If you liek his humour, and don’t get oo uncomfortable with people cleverly back-handedly insulting someone (aka Bush)WATCH THIS! (If you haven’t already) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879

rumtumtugger — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:57:17 +0000

I found Sut Jhally’s article eye-opening, but perhaps too much ‘impending doom’. His comment “Capitalism therefore has to ensure the sale of commodities on pain of death“ I thought was a very outlandish claim. It is true what he says about schools and advertisement. My mom teaches at a High School, and I was there, and there are Coke displays with t-shirts, backpacks, hoodies, chairs etc. for sale. That way all these young people can be walking advertisements. But, why is this happening? I can assure you the extra funding is not going to the teachers. No, it is going to extra-curricular activities, counselling services, better equipment and things like that. Obviously education does not have enough funding to do all that they need to do. So a huge corporation offers them a bunch of cash to display and sell Coke products. Now, I think, (and this is me speculating) perhaps in this case the good that the funding does for the students, could outweigh the bad.

More damaging, I think are the images of women. I agree with Friedrich that females have to get the idea that we do not look good enough from somewhere, Friedrich suggests it is ads. I agree that it is desires that are sold instead of products themselves with negative messages of women. I don’t think that all commercials with men are positive either, but I do think that less attractive men are seen more often on tv than women.

When I was in High School I was in a play about magazines and advertisements. When we were first developing and writing the script I was removed from the idea. I did not think I was influenced by advertisements. But throughout the process, I realized just how much it influenced my perception of my outer self. Even though I know it is a distorted version of the female body. I see posters on my boyfriends wall and think that is what he wants. He looks at them and wishes I was that way, which may or may not be true. I don’t want to lose weight to be healthy, I want to lose it so I can look good.

Here is something I saw in a Sociology class (I’m pretty sure its not this class, but if it is, boy would this be embarrasing.) The top of the Coke machine .. the bubbly at the top looks like a female lying down, you can see her breasts and then her flowing hair coming down, see if you can catch it: