Soundtrack

My first song on the soundtrack of my life would be Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana.  The reason why is because the lyrics are nearly impossible to understand, and life for me is often unintelligible.  My Second song is Kristy are you Doing Okay? by The Offspring.  The Offspring is probably my favorite band, and this is one of their lighter songs.  I saw The Offspring live last summer, and this song was fantastic.  My third song would be Candle in the Wind by Elton John because, ironically, this is the song I play when I kiss my pillow and cry because Marilyn Monroe is dead.  Also I just really enjoy listening to Elton John's music.  Sure it's a bit before my time, but it is rather relaxing.  My fourth song would be Turn it On by Franz Ferdinand.  I pretty much just like the beat for this song.  I also saw them live, very good performance.  The final song of my soundtrack would be You're Beautiful by James Blunt because despite what anyone says, James Blunt is awesome.  Also oddly enough I met one of my good friends from high school by singing this to her.  So I guess it's kind of relevant to my life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AULaJdMPmIw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GLwA4P3QDk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFJZMwt9ek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oofSnsGkops

Library

The process to find a book related to my topic was pretty easy.  I searched in madcat with the phrase "Economic policies great depression"  and several results came up.  One of the books I found was located in college library in room 1191, which is to the left of the main entrance.  The book was called "The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941"  There were several other similar books located nearby regarding presidents in the early 1900's.  Some of the books were:  Theodore Rex, Woodrow Wilson, Correspondances between Roosevelt and Stalin, and Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive.  Most of these seemed like they also had relevance to economic policies leading to depressions, and during depressions.  I didn't check any of the books out, I am still working on refining my topic to decide which era's I am going to look at specifically. 


 Here is a citation for the book I searched for.

 McElvaine, Robert S.  The Great Depression: America, 1929- 1941. Toronto, Canada.  Fitzhenry & Whiteside LTD.

The World's Most Interesting Man

I’ve seen this advertisement a few times over Christmas break at my house.  The advertisement is for a used car website called WittAuto.com.  The commercial is a spoof of the “world’s most interesting man” Dos Equis commercials.  The commercial announcer basically talks about how classy the man in the commercial is.  The man in the commercial however is not classy in the least.  This is the link to the commercial on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3zZ3TcaEg

                The style of the advertisement is playing to humor.  The commercial can be funny even if you haven’t seen the Dos Equis commercials.  I don’t think this can be categorized under one of Fowle’s appeals.  From what the announcer says it seems like it appeals to the need for prominence, but the man is described as a “fine food officianado”   while he is analyzing a box of lucky charms.  It could be potentially classified as the need for affiliation when the two people are talking to him at the end, but this is the same format as the Dos Equis commercial, so I don’t think it is intended.  I think this commercial is meant to make people laugh, in hopes that consumers will remember their website.  I actually thought this ad was pretty effective to remember the business.  I was able to recall what the website name was when I searched for the video.  It didn’t convince me to buy a car from there, but I do have the name of the website in the back of my mind.  So I would consider this ad effective.

Research

The research topic I thought of was lowering the drinking age would decrease alcohol related incidents.  I’ve chosen this topic because I personally feel the drinking age of twenty one is extremely high.  I want to see if there are statistics or studies showing that lower drinking ages can be safer for societies.  For example, I want to research the number of alcohol related traffic deaths before the 21 year old drinking age was set and deaths after it was enforced.  The talk on lowering the drinking age is pretty common, but few have statistics on the effects of the new drinking age on society.  This is why I want to look into it myself to determine if raising the drinking age had negative effects on society.  I'm not really sure how this topic will work out in the end.  I guess it will depend on how much information I can find to support, or disprove my theory.

Gladwell Something Borrowed

In Something Borrowed, Malcom Gladwell makes the point that borrowing ideas can be alright in some cases because it improves and builds on existing ideas.  He uses several examples to support this idea.  His first example is from a friend of his who works in the music industry.  His friend played several songs which had similar composition.  “He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen carefully to the similarity in bass lines.” (69).  Another is the passage from the book, Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig.  Lessig uses the metaphor of buying a picnic table and copying your neighbor to show the point that the neighbor isn’t hurt at all from this copying.

I thought this piece was an uncommon view to look at plagiarism.  Throughout all of my years in school, I was always told that plagiarism is bad regardless of the situation.  The fact that many popular songs and movies originated from older pieces is something that rarely crossed my mind in the past.  The piece was a bit confusing at first especially, but interesting nonetheless.

Racism

                In Racism, author Ayn Rand makes the point that racism is evil, but individual rights triumph over any issue.  Early in the piece Rand explains how no race is superior or inferior based on individuals.  She states this by saying, “It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice:  the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has “produced” some brutes or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has “produced” Goethe, Schiller and Brahms” (127).  For the concept of individual rights, she talks about how blacks’ rights were infringed on in South by whites.   She also says that black leaders are attempting to infringe on business owners’ rights by placing a quota on the number of blacks they higher per population.  Her final point is that even a racist’s rights should be protected when it involves their private property, which is her major disagreement with the 1964 Civil Rights act. 

                I thought this piece was interesting, also confusing at times.  I thought the points Rand made on racism early on were very good early in the piece.  The part that really confused me though was the last page where she disagreed with the Civil Rights Act.  I’ve honestly never heard of anyone disagreeing with the Civil Rights Act that didn’t present a racist argument until reading this.  The phrase, “Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue” (134) led me into a huge philosophical argument with myself.  Should a person be able to discriminate based on race when it involves a business that they paid for and they run?  I strongly believe it is morally wrong, but should people be mandated how they use their money?  It also led me to the question, can a government really control racism, or does it come down to the individual and their beliefs?   I really have no idea what the answers to these questions are, but they were interesting to think about none the less.