intro...eh, what?

What happens to a culture or a cultural tradition when new media like the internet, popular cinema, and alternative recording techniques are woven into the society? In many cases the society weaves this new information and lifestyle into the culture; they acculturate the information into a new idea, into a culturally-acceptable idea that then spreads throughout the entire nation. In some nations, many believe that the modernizing world is a detriment to the cultural history; however, modern media influences have helped to preserve and protect the national culture and the cultural history in India through the Bollywood traditions. Not only do they make them more readily accessible, but they aid in guarding the greater and older traditions of dance, music and oration. This is, overall, a major benefit to culture and proves to benefit the culture by preserving, respecting and honoring it, rather than destroying or hindering it.

Calcium is bad for you.

From the day Neolithic man discovered pitch, music has been evolving for thousands of years. One would think that at the dawn of the 20th century, music would have reached perfection. Enter Stravinsky, the eccentric Russian composer whose two ballets, The Firebird and Petroushka, had achieved great popularity. In the spring of 1913, Stravinsky and the avant-garde choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky thought of something completely new. They dug down deep into Russian's pre-Christian, Slavic roots and designed a performance featuring ritual, tribal sacrifice. Stravinsky's rhythmic, percussive strings combined with completely atonal chords and eerie melodies; a style never before experience. The piece has been called the most important piece of music written in the 20th century. Its initial reception, however, was horrendous. Booing cries of disgust appeared just after the first movement. Enthusiasts willing to give the music a chance invited arguments. Fighting ensued. Stravinsky's premiere of his epic work representing a life of study and millenniums of musical evolution was met with a riot. How could The Rite of Spring be condoned by musicians and musicologists as a wonder yet receive one of the most ill-met premieres in history? It all comes down to the public’s understanding and ability to appreciate musical complexity. Through the natural selection of popular music, the common man’s aloofness to musical intricacies prevents musical genres from becoming too complex and alienating the populace.

Relying on Technology

In today’s day and age, technology is everywhere around us. We use technology in almost everything now. We have our cell phones, laptop computers, portable music players, even electronic cash registers. We as a people have come to rely on this technology for some of the most mundane tasks. One of these things we don’t do for ourselves anymore is in getting directions and traveling. No longer do people get directions from actual other people, or from a map. Now, we just punch an address into our navigation systems we have installed in our cars. Once we have done that, we just blindly follow where it tells us to go. It's my belief that this is having a negative effect on our society.

So Much Cooler Online Intro

Three million people use the internet each day, of those three million about seven hundred and fifty thousand of them are using social networking sites (citation i forgot which one it is from when i wrote it down but will find it). Social networks provide constant connections to friends, family members, classmates and even strangers. The constant contact these sites provide with others, can affect the relationships of the users in positive and negative ways. Catching up after lost time, or suffocating one another with too much information. These sites can help and or hurt you and your relationships with others. Some of these sites are designed to help you find your true love or soul mate. While others are used to post information about everything in your life from pictures, messages, new statuses and more. Whatever the design of the site, caution needs to be taken to ensure safety and also to establish healthy relationships with others. Social networking sites can be used for many different purposes. One of the major attractions of social networking sites is the ability to reconnect with people from your past or that are not nearby. Another major appeal of social networking sites is the opportunity it provides for you to not to be alone or lonely. This lack of loneliness and constant connection to others, can sometimes lead to an illusion of popularity through a popular cyber social life. But is a cyber life a good replacement for reality? What kind of effects are social networking sites having on our relationships with others? The increase in usage of social networking sites causes fake confidence given to the users and affects their relationships with their peers.

Trade: The Free and the Fair

The world is out to get us. Give them an inch and they will walk all over you. In 2002 President Bush passed a steel tariff called the steel tariff act of 2002. (cleverly named) it was meant to save our domestic steel industry from the “unfair” trade of the world. Other nations were undercutting our prices and selling consumers steel that was 30% cheaper. The audacity! Unfortunately for the steel industry the tariff lasted for less then a year because the world trade organization took disciplinary measures. What were they thinking? Don’t they care about our struggling nation? Surly all they were worried about was helping other people and leaving us to hang.

Free trade is one of those things that everybody has an opinion on but no one fully understands. Whether you’re listening to Glenn Beck or Ben Bernanke you’ll find ideas are across the board. What is the big deal with free trade in the first place? Is it damnation or salvation… or maybe a little of both.

hmmmm how to start?

Do you remember the good old days when you worked really hard on your homework, finished it, then your mom gave you the ok, and you ran to the TV…. Grabbed your favorite video game… but before putting it in…. you blew in it so that it would work. When the most violent game was either Duck Hunt or Lemmings (poor little green guys…) or Super Mario where you unmercifully killed walking mushrooms! Back when you turned off the game that was it… the only big effect it had on your life was those really obnoxious Tetris dreams you would have flipping blocks all night? Video games have come a LONG way sense then, the change is almost night and day! Now days you will find some games with such great dept to the game play that you could spend hours, days, even years and never beat it. Games that you end up doing double take to figure out if its real or not because of its quality of graphics. And instead of playing with one other choice friend in your families TV room, now from your bedroom you can play with nearly 12 million people. Online gaming has become a huge part of today’s culture and society. The question though is proposed, are all these advances in video gaming affecting our society for the better or were we better off with Mario?

Introduction

For 8-18 year olds, an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes is taken up daily by entertainment media, such as TV and DVD watching, computer and video games, surfing the web, texting and listening to music, reports the Kaiser Family Foundation. They go on to say that during this 7 1/2 hour time, children are actually fitting in a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media usage because they are using more than one media activity at a time, they are multitasking with media. Every single day is consumed by that much media for children and that adds up to over 53 hours a week! Thats a full time job, except they are not doing anything productive. What are children spending their time doing? As shown they are wasting their time with plenty of media. With school being part of their day and sleeping part of the day that doesn't leave much time for homework, family time or even exercising. With all this usage of media are children taking care of their bodies? In today's world children's time is being consumed by media which in turn is affecting their health. Parents need to realize what their children are spending their time doing. Not only what children are doing, but what their child is missing and what all this time spent on media is replacing. Physical activity is being cut out of children's lives because children can no longer find time to do it. This media usage is taking so much time out of their lives that they feel the least important thing to squeeze in there is exercising, so they don't. The increase of media usage is replacing some of the time that could be spent in physical activity which in turn is effecting children's health, for the bad.

In the Beginning...

Yes...I know it's two paragraphs...but this is my entire intro and the first paragraph doesn't make sense without the second.

A salty sea breeze blew in from the Atlantic Ocean near Charleston, South Carolina. The waves, gently rolling in, beckoned all around to come and cool off from what had been a warm July day.Suddenly a high whistle pierced the calm summer’s evening followed by a large explosion and the cries of men struck by hot pieces of shrapnel. Orders were shouted up and down the lines as explosions occurred at an ever increasing rate. Miraculously reaching the earthen embankment leading to Fort Wagner an impressive figure stood boldly atop it, waving his sword, beckoning his men onward. With a sudden crack and cloud of smoke this man crumpled in a heap, the victim of enemy musket fire. The sounds of battle reached alarming levels when suddenly a lone voice in the distance cried out, “Cut!”
In 1989, a movie was released which told the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first official colored regiments in the Union Army during the Civil War. It was the movie “Glory” directed by Edward Zwick. “Glory” and other dramatic historical films have been heralded both as important pieces of historical teaching and as historically heretical. The genre of historical film has been belittled and attacked by numerous historians. They claim that the films revise history or do not show an accurate portrayal of historical events, do not allow people to think critically, and create a historically numb society. To take this stance on this genre of popular film is detrimental to historical learning. Dramatic historical films are an important part of historical understanding and when created and viewed correctly, they can have great influence in society.

Introducing...

The Role of Documentaris in the Changing History Classroom

Memorizing imporant dates, reciting the Preamble to the Constitution and copying facts off of teh blackboard; each of these activities have been used by history teachers to convey the most important facts of history. These methods have been tested and proven to be effective, yet with our changing technological world, the way in which we teach must also change. By incorporating specific mediums of technology into the classroom, namely documentaries made by professionals and students, history teachers can more effectively teach their students the required material and create interest in a potentially boring subject. Professional documentaries allow students to explore biases and viewpoints in history and student-created documentaries allow students to research and compile their findings in a meaningful way.

intro

The practices of midwifery have fluctuated in the years, growing in and out of popularity. Why has this occurred? Midwifery is no longer the most common method of childbirth. Society now considers is most logical to deliver babies in hospitals, with the help of doctors. It is also viewed that midwives are not fully equipped with the knowledge or technology to safely deliver babies in a home environment. What most women in America don’t realize is that midwives are usually just as trained in delivering babies as any doctor, and most of the time they have safer and more logical methods. The fact of the matter is that many of the protocol methods in hospitals actually infringe upon the rights of the mother in making decisions about her childbirth. This essay will analyze the many different ways that hospital protocol is actually harmful and unnecessary while midwifery practices more perfectly attend to each individual mother and child’s needs. It will also explore where these new traditional practices come from and how they have been led astray.

Body Image and the Internet

“Karen: God. My hips are huge! Gretchen: Oh please. I hate my calves. Regina: At least you guys can wear halters. I've got man shoulders. Gretchen: My hairline is so weird. Regina: My pores are huge. Karen: My nail beds suck.” Truthfully speaking, there is about a 95% chance that if you’re female you can name this movie. Mean Girls is a movie about a girl, Cady, from Africa conforming to the social “norms” of high school. The leader of a notorious band of popular girls, the plastics, is the character Regina. She is the embodiment of the perfect female with her flawless skin, thin body, and shiny teeth. She and her and her band of girls are all the envy of the school as everyone, but the “dorks” try to change their fashions to become like her. They not only change their own reflections, but their sense of self as they needlessly try to morph into someone they are not. Mean Girls is just one of many examples that houses an underlying theme or a general theme that revolves on the principle that happiness is dependent on beauty, thinness and perfection. There are more documented cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa than ever before. Women are constantly in pursuit of that ideal, and are losing themselves and their self confidence when they cannot reach this staggering goal. The media is constantly producing films, advertisements, television shows, internet and magazine ads that depict young women with the ideal body weight and it has a strong effect on the psyches of young women today. The overexposure of negative images to young women through the media, more specifically the internet, creates a negative self image which manifests itself in destructive ways. This paper defines the terms: negative body image as being low self perception, demeaning or destructive thoughts regarding the body; negative images as advertisements, circulated propaganda, videos portraying, or computer generated women who are ideally thin; ideally thin as having a BMI of around 18.5 or lower; normal or average weight or body as a BMI of 20 or higher.

Intro Revision

For several years suicide has been a tragedy. Yet something that has just begun to emerge in the previous decades is the internet. These two topics may seem unconnected but in reality the internet is making an impact on suicide. In fact there is now even a term cybersuicide because of the issue it has become. “Cybersuicide is a term used in reference to suicide and its ideations on the Internet. Cybersuicide is associated with websites that lure vulnerable members of society and empower them with various methods and approaches to deliberate self-harm.” (R, Birbal)

According to an article in the British Medical Journal, “More than 100000 sites about suicide now appear on the world wide web. Many of these seem to condone suicide and forbid entry to anyone offering to dissuade users from taking their own lives”. With all this information on the web it is important to learn more about the impact of cybersuicide. Although the internet can be a beneficial source in helping those struggling with suicidal thoughts, it can also be a negative influence. The internet may go as far as to encourage people to commit suicide. People need to be aware and cautious of the harmful interactions and information about suicide that the internet provides.

Electronic Babysitters Intro. Awesome.

There exists today a rift in consensus concerning the effectiveness of educational media in babies’ and toddlers’ intellectual growth. Although the products that are being churned out in vast quantites claim to improve vocabulary, one is led to wonder whether these are truly grounded facts. Parents concerned with whether to trust education media such as Baby Einstein and Dora the Explorer or not often suggest manually working with their children as a viable alternative. One must look into scientific research on the matter to truly assuage one’s curiosity about the subject, especially in the light of the fact that these claims are offset by accusations that it is media itself that is harming children’s educational and academic potential. As it were, statistical data is readily available on a number of these products, comparing their expected performance to their actual. The results serve to suggest at what the overall effect of such dependency on child-rearing media can be. Media is no stranger to the public eye – it has been repeatedly attacked and defended by various groups in the past. In the field of academics in particular, media tends to play a large, and wholly diverse role. In order to better comprehend the nature of media schooling for babies and toddlers, one can look at the media related to the lives and study habits of older children. Media plays a number of roles in this regard – first, there is media used by teachers in a classroom setting, breaking the expected norm of the conventional teaching methods of lectures and hands-on demonstrations. The other type of media is the face that the general public has come more to know – recreational pastimes such as television, internet, and video gaming. These outlets are notably reviled by extreme activists; it shouldn't be too far from the truth to assert that in today's society, most people are familiar with the claim that media is in a sense education's bane, regularly being the cause of lacklustre performances and scores in the academic setting. Although any widespread argument possesses its share of overarching and, at times, blatantly untruthful claims, it nevertheless cannot be denied that with a campaign so well-known, the argument that media is an educational deterrent must have its strands of veracity in it. In fact, when all things are considered, it is a veritable opinion to have that educational media probably has fewer benefits than it claims to have, and quite possibly a number of negative side effects, specifically when exposed to those of a young age.

Intro: Online Gaming Addictions

Online Gaming Addiction – Hurting you and me

The internet could be hailed as one of the most influential and effecting programs that the world has ever been exposed to. It has helped hundreds of millions of people to connect with each other. It has provided ways of sending information instantly, allowing for technology and sciences to advance rapidly because of the instant communication. It has helped people gain access to trillions upon trillions amounts of information. It has provided ways for people, who would not have been able to do so otherwise, to go to school and learn. It has opened up the opportunity to increase the economic status of people everywhere. It has also provided more jobs which employs more people and more people employed produces a better economy. It has even provided means of entertainment ranging from videos and movies to games to chat rooms to blogs and forums. But along with this great mount of good that the internet has provided, it has also provided a great deal of heart ache and misery.
Like most anything else, the internet can be abused and cause a catastrophic destruction. It can ruin one person’s life, it can tear apart families, and it can destroy a nation because of what we can do with it. Viruses, illegal down-loadings, fraud, identity theft, pornography, sexual abuse, and more have risen as a result of the internet. And just like most anything else, it can also become addictive. Because of the wide range of uses that the internet provides there is a wide range of factors that influence becoming addicted, and there is a wide range of aspects to become addicted to – chat rooms, online shopping, Facebook and Myspace, email, internet surfing, pornography. Of all of the internet addictions, addictions to online gaming or MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role playing games) caused by excessive play time of can deteriorate family and social relationships.