Entry #11: The Final Blog About Blogs

Blogging has been a unique experience I have never done before nor would I ever have if not for my English 102 class. The act of sharing my thoughts for the world to hear has been rather fun even if no one is really around to read them. I have been using this blog almost as a personal journal using the free-write entries to highlight and share some of my favorite things with the world. Blogging for me has been an experience of making the things I am interested in interesting for other people, which has been something I have rather enjoyed. I never really took the blogging project overly serious besides making sure it done for my grades. I always just took it easy and let whatever I wanted to write about be what the entry ended up being rather than trying to force something or plan out my entries, I tried to just let the writing come naturally. I will probably not continue blogging in the future but I am happy to have had the experience of blogging. 

Actually blogging has changed my opinion on bloggers as well. They have to put more thought and effort into their works than I had originally given them credit for. While there are still bad bloggers out there that spread mis-information and use their blog to promote an agenda there are also plenty of interesting and fun blogs out there. 

There is a lot to learn with blogging. Blogging makes the author think more about who their audience is than normal essay writing does. Furthermore the author has to consider the fact that the blog is accessible to everyone and must be more thoughtful of what is being posted. No one wants the blog they wrote in community college to end up being used against them in the future.  Beyond just academic learning I learned a lot about my class mates by reading their blogs. They shared a lot of personal and interesting things that I would never have found out without the blog project. 

As an assignment for class the blog project was great for highlighting the importance of choosing your audience and writing in such a way as to appeal to them. Overall it was an interesting aspect to take rather than having us do another essay. I appreciated the fact that the work was spread out over time rather than having another large assignment to do in a short amount of time. I think the commenting on other’s blogs could should have been expanded, I enjoyed giving others comments on their blog and receiving some on my own. 

The main place I did not like the blog project and felt restricted by it was when I had to write on very specific topics that I had no interest in. While this is a good writing exercise in and of itself it was hard to generate an entry that I found was worthy to post when I felt like I had nothing worthy of being said on the issue. I noticed that many of my class mate’s blog posts were rather short, being around a paragraph in length. Personally I found that these posts were terrible to make comments on and usually did not say much. Adding a guideline of what a minimum blog post should be might be helpful to give students a better perspective on what a good blog post involved. 

Entry 5: Ducey's Deuce

I found this (http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2016/09/17/arizona-needs-more-college-grads-ducey/90363958/) article that basically doesn’t say much written by Gary Ducey. This article is a simple rallying cry for Arizonians that sort of informs us of the new policy Ducey is trying to enact. It talks all about the importance of education and the benefits the state will have from having a highly educated population. He talks about the economic benefits and increase tax revenue.

Ducey does not explain his plan in depth beyond increasing education spending. He does not specify where this money is going beyond what type of schools will be receiving this funding. He does not mention if it is going to teachers, to new books, nothing; no clue as to what the actual plan is in order to help students achieve this. He lists “better career readiness” as one of the goals but doesn’t define what this is or how this plan will achieve it.

As a student Ducey’s plan doesn’t really concern me unless it will somehow help me pay for college. Then yeah sounds good but otherwise I think it’s nice to try and get more people educated but Ducey’s article is more of a piece that says this should happen than anything about how. If it raises my taxes and doesn’t help me that is something I wouldn’t be a fan of but not try and repeal or anything since money going to school is good in general. 

Entry 6: Protesting the Protests

Blog 6
                I was going to avoid writing about the election, really I did not even want to bother with such a highly charged and emotionally raw topic for a lot of people. Personally I did not care which candidate won, I will start off by saying that to me really the “good” option didn’t exist there was the crook and the bigot and neither should be leading this country. That is just my opinion but it helps you to see my bias and opinions on the issue.

                For the last couple of days people have been protesting en masse about the election of Donald Trump. At first I thought they were protesting the results and I could not understand how they could be protesting the results of democracy, the system working as intended. That is until I actually listened to some protestors and learned they were protesting the things Trump stood for and that those values are not ones they agreed with, and I understood. For me this election doesn’t effect me or matter to me enough to make me want to protest, I think we can pull together as a country and get through whatever our new president has in store. But clearly some people believe this is the beginning of the end.

                Peaceful protest is a foundation of our society. It is important for people to be able to express themselves to the government and the rest of the country. Some of the protests have seemed silly to me, such as the students that walked out of school with signs saying “Education not deportation” … if you want education don’t walk out of school. Overall the protesting have been positive messages of peaceful protest. What detracts from the protests the most I believe is when people use them as way to riot and loot rather than get their peaceful message across. The rioters and looters destroy the message the rest of the protestors are trying to get across. There are several stories across the nation of supposedly peaceful people attacking Trump supporters, one story in particular that comes to mind is a group of Black Lives Matter protestors who beat up and 74 year old Trump supporter and stole their truck. That type of “protesting” only creates more divides in our country and has no place in this world. It is not getting a message across it is simply being a criminal.

                If the nation is going to come together and heal then peace and understanding need to be the resounding messages, not hate and violence. Those who spread hate and violence are simply turning people against whatever message they stand for hurting their cause and the cause of those around them. 

Entry 4: Quizzically Questioning

Blog 4

                Every week my friends and I get together and play trivia at a bar. It amazes me the number of people who do not know the activity exists and are surprised to learn about it. The way the game works is everyone at your table is your team. You create a team name and the organizer uses that name to keep track of your team’s points. The organizer will go around and hand your team a score sheet to keep track of your own points on and a pad of paper to write your team’s answers down on it. The game is organized into 6 rounds of 3 questions with a mid-game and end game special question. During each round the organizer will tell everyone the topics of the three questions in the round: History, politics, and religion for example. For the first 3 rounds each team will assign each of the questions in the round either 5, 3, or 1 point, using each value only once in a round. The assignment is chosen when the team answers a question and the questions are answered on at a time. Teams can use the topics of future rounds to gauge how easily they will be able to answer future questions to strategize which point values to assign. Should the team get the question right then they will receive however many points that they assigned to the question. The mid round question is usually a question that will have multiple correct answers and teams get 2 points for each correct answer they submit. An example of a midround question was “what are all of the elements that end in -on that are not noble gases”. The second 3 rounds continue like the first except the assigned point values are 6-4-2 rather than 5-3-1 making the second round even more important to answer correctly than the first. The final question is a hard question that will have a variable amount of answers but the question is always difficult. Each team will wager from 0-15 points on their answer. Should the team get the question correct then they get that many points, and if they get it wrong they lose that many points. The top 3 teams get a gift card reward at the end.

                Team Trivia is a fun activity that many more people should know about. My team has only gotten into the top 3 once yet we enjoy going all the same. A strong knowledge of presidents and 80’s pop culture as well as sports history would be the most successful subjects to study to insure success. 

Entry #3: Straightening a Slant

Blog 3:

                Slanted reporting always a problem but gets so much worse during this time of year- election time. When looking for an example of slanted reporting it wasn’t an issue of finding one but narrowing done which article I wanted to write about. So many people get their news from their friends through Facebook so that was where I wanted to get my article from-one my friends linked to on Facebook. After reading several I decided on one that several friends linked to from Occupy Democrats, Trump Said He’d “Get Rid” Of Lobbyists. He Just Hired Dozens For Top Roles” found at: http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/11/11/trump-said-hed-get-rid-lobbyists-just-hired-dozens-top-roles/ . Right away noticing from the source this article clearly is not going to be unbiased, it comes from a very liberal source referencing the Occupy Wall Street movement and is not shy about it. The website’s “About Us” Sections claims that the website is a “political organization and information website” yet those two things cannot truly exist together in harmony, political organizations have an agenda they are pushing while information websites attempt to present information with the least bias possible.

                Jumping into the article it is clear from the beginning that the author, Colin Taylor, would not be trying to present each side reasonably or to give a full picture of the issue. Taylor calls Trump’s voters “naïve” immediately insulting the intelligence oh around half the population of the country, the people who put Trump in power. I am sure there are naïve voters on both sides of the issue not all on one side. Taylor shows his own ignorance by claiming that “Drain the swamp!” was the “rallying cry” for Trump’s campaign. If anything “Make America Great Again” is by far the more popular and well known rallying. Clearly using mis-leading facts destroys an author’s authority and creates doubt in the reader’s eyes.

Taylor does use some concrete evidence by listing who Trump is considering using for his cabinet as well as their credentials. The ones listed are indeed lobbyists who Trump claimed would be kicked out of the Washington. These people however do have relevant experience to the position they are being assigned to. Taylor does not include a discussion of WHY these people were chosen or discuss what they could offer to the position, defaulting to assuming that there would be some corruption at work.

Another point Taylor uses to decry Trump is the fact that ““the president-elect’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined a request for comment, as did nearly a dozen corporate executives, consultants and lobbyists serving on his transition team” from the New York Times claiming that this would be a “Common theme in the Trump Administration”. It is highly probable that the Trump Administration is incredibly busy getting ready for the upcoming presidency and cannot possibly respond to all requests for comment. The Trump administration has already staged several press conferences and I am sure will continue to do more trying to keep the public informed on his policies.

Occupy Democrats does not feel like it needs to be an unbiased source of news. It’s audience is already people who by and large already agree with the liberal views expressed by the website and so will agree with the slanted view they present. The problem with this is that it creates world where people can exist in an echo chamber, only hearing their own opinions echoed back to them. 

Entry #1: A Blog About Blogs

Honestly I never have been a fan of blogs. I have always seen them as something lonely housewives do to try and reach out to the world and interact with it in ways they haven't been able to achieve in their day to day life.

Well that was my opinion anyways until I started looking into what blogging was really all about. Blogging is as varied as people are, while there is the boring blog that is only relevant those who personally know the author there is also a vast expanse of general interest and special interest blogs that would appeal to a wide variety of people, myself included.

One blog that I have visited for years without even realizing was actually a blog was Post Secret. This is a blog where people send in post cards with secrets written on them which are then published on the blog. This blog is interesting as you get insight into people's personal thoughts and experience. There is often reoccurring themes such as a drive towards suicide or trouble within marriage that helps those struggling with those issues see that they aren't the only one in that situation and feel like maybe there is hope for them if others were able to overcome those obstacles in their life.  This blog connects people in ways not possible in daily life. The aspect of anonymity let's users openly share their darkest secrets without ever being revealed, sometimes the internet is the only place these secrets ever get told. Psychology shows it is healthy to let go of things rather than keeping them bottled in and Post Secret gives users a place to do just that.

The layout of Post Secret is very simple, letting the images speak for themselves with little to no interpretative text. When there is interpretive text then it is usually a translation of a language other than English or a single sentence that gives greater context to the entry. The black background makes the website seem serious, somber and highlights the secret nature of the website. The black pairs well with the often dark content of the post cards, yet the white text emphasizes the message of hope the blog tries to convey; the light shining through the darkness.

Another blog with a similar style to Post Secret is The Sartorialist. The Sartorialist appears to be a fashion blog. Now high fashion is not something I have any knowledge of and the website is presented in such a way that I believe requires existing knowledge of high fashion to enjoy. As with Post Secret a simple mono-chromatic background is chosen, this time white. There are pictures of people wearing fashionable clothing with the only text being when and where the picture was taken. The blog claims to create a "two-way conversation on fashion" a claim which it fails to reach. There is no conversation going on as far as I am aware, merely pictures being presented saying "this is fashion" with no expounding on what that means or why the pictures are fashionable.

While the above blogs are very serious in their presentation there are also blogs which are much more light-hearted in nature, such as the blog Dog Shaming. Dog Shaming is a blog where people post pictures of their dog with a written message about something they did wrong, publicly "shaming" the dog for their wrongful behavior. The background for this website is a wooden floor with dog prints on it, creating a playful image as one imagines little dogs scampering across the floor, making those prints.

After doing research and actually opening my mind to the possibility that their may be more to blogging than I first thought I have come to appreciate them more. The blogs that I can form a connection with such as Post Secret and Dog Shaming add value to my life, allowing an online community to form and interact with the content provided while those I do not connect with such as Sartorialist hold no interest for me as I don't feel like I can interact with them in any meaningful way.

Entry #2: The Importance of Food

                So, I am a huge gamer, it’s always been a passion of mine from the moment my hands first came across my neighbor’s Playstation controller to today. The types of games I play vary and I enjoy all types. The game I am currently playing is one called “Don’t Starve”. It is a survival game where your object is, as the title implies, not to starve. The game goes so much further than that though, it’s about planning ahead, being creative and using resources wisely. It has a cute, Tim Burton-esque horror theme to it that helps to draw the game together. Player’s start the game off with their chosen character being dropped off into a world they know practically nothing about with a tall man in a suit standing over their character telling them “you better find something to eat before night falls”. With that he disappears and the player must figure out how to get that done with a hint that something ominous happens in the night time.

                The player might start off noticing that there is a bunch of objects that they are able to pick off the ground, and a menu for building things on the left side of the screen. Some of the items are obvious what their use if for, such as berries, while others are not apparent what they do, such as flowers. Collecting twigs and flint the player can start to make tools to help them gather more valuable resources, such as wood and stone. The player needs to make sure they build a fire or some other source of light by the time the first night comes as the ominous hint given in the beginning is very true and there is a monster named Charlie hiding in the darkness. At night Charlie will come out and attack any player not in the light, killing them rather quickly. Whenever the player dies that save is deleted and logged into the morgue, a running list of all the different times the player has died. In other words, once the player dies they must start the game over.

                Once players have begun to gather resources they should start looking for a relatively rare resource called gold. Gold can be found in certain nodes of rock. Gold allows the player to start creating structures that unlock more advanced things to build. Having built these structures (science machine and alchemy machine) a player should start looking at the food tab and building farms and other things out of it to help them survive.

                The true danger of Don’t Starve is usually not the food part but rather the means that players go about acquiring this food. Hunting is a very efficient way to acquire food and other useful items however the creatures of the land do not die easily and will attack the player when the player attacks them. Furthermore, there are hounds that will periodically spawn and hunt down the player until either the player is slain or the hounds are. Finally unbeknownst to the new player, there are seasons in the game and winter offers unique challenges in having to keep warm and a general lack of food during the season.

                There is generally thought of a way to “win” the game, though really the object is to survive as long as possible. There is a portal somewhere in the world that takes the player out of “survival mode” and puts them into a separate realm of “adventure mode”. Adventure mode provides unique challenges for the player where they attempt to assemble 5 items in the new realm they spawn in and assemble them into a new portal to move onto the next level of adventure mode. There are 5 levels in total in adventure mode and players who complete all 5 are usually thought of as having beat the game.

                Overall Don’t Starve is a great puzzle game that I have put way too many hours into. The game is challenging and offers a new challenge every time it is played. With the harsh “restart the game” consequence of dying it makes it a real challenge to try and survive and thrive in the world of Don’t Starve. 

Entry #0: The Beginning

Hey all, this is Alex, a current student at GCC reintroducing myself for the revamping of my blog. I am a huge gamer and love playing both board and video games. In addition to gaming I explore all over Arizona, going both caving and hiking. At GCC I study business and will be transferring to a University to get a degree in either accounting or finance. Beyond school and recreation I work at Quik Trip (the best gas station out there) as a clerk. For this blog I will be creating a casual/professional blog that investigates a wide variety of topics that I find interesting and I am sure you will to.

Entry 11: The End

Blogging has been a unique experience I have never done before nor would I ever have if not for my English 101 class. The act of sharing my thoughts for the world to hear has been rather fun even if no one is really around to read them. I have been using this blog almost as a personal journal using the free-write entries to highlight and share some of my favorite things with the world. Blogging for me has been an experience of making the things I am interested in interesting for other people, which has been something I have rather enjoyed. I never really took the blogging project overly serious besides making sure it done for my grades. I always just took it easy and let whatever I wanted to write about be what the entry ended up being rather than trying to force something or plan out my entries, I tried to just let the writing come naturally. I will probably not continue blogging in the future but I am happy to have had the experience of blogging.

Actually blogging has changed my opinion on bloggers as well. They have to put more thought and effort into their works than I had originally given them credit for. While there are still bad bloggers out there that spread mis-information and use their blog to promote an agenda there are also plenty of interesting and fun blogs out there.

There is a lot to learn with blogging. Blogging makes the author think more about who their audience is than normal essay writing does. Furthermore the author has to consider the fact that the blog is accessible to everyone and must be more thoughtful of what is being posted. No one wants the blog they wrote in community college to end up being used against them in the future.  Beyond just academic learning I learned a lot about my class mates by reading their blogs. They shared a lot of personal and interesting things that I would never have found out without the blog project.

As an assignment for class the blog project was great for highlighting the importance of choosing your audience and writing in such a way as to appeal to them. Overall it was an interesting aspect to take rather than having us do another essay. I appreciated the fact that the work was spread out over time rather than having another large assignment to do in a short amount of time. I think the commenting on other’s blogs could should have been expanded, I enjoyed giving others comments on their blog and receiving some on my own.

The main place I did not like the blog project and felt restricted by it was when I had to write on very specific topics that I had no interest in. While this is a good writing exercise in and of itself it was hard to generate an entry that I found was worthy to post when I felt like I had nothing worthy of being said on the issue. I noticed that many of my class mate’s blog posts were rather short, being around a paragraph in length. Personally I found that these posts were terrible to make comments on and usually did not say much. Adding a guideline of what a minimum blog post should be might be helpful to give students a better perspective on what a good blog post involved. 

Entry #7: Fresh

In class this week we watched the movie Fresh. Fresh is a movie shot the style of documentary portraying different aspects of the food industry, specifically the anti-industrial farming movement. The film highlights the benefits that alternative farming methods have over industrial farming. The film is very light in tone, the people talk to you as if you were a friend. The shots were taken in very authentic ways; the crews filmed the farmers as they were working in the field, talking on the phone, or over meals. To compare to these alternative farmers a industrial farmer is also interviewed and their position is used as the standard for those in industrial farming. When they are interviewed there is a slightly different mood than when the alternative farming farmers are interviewed. The industrial farmers have an air of despair around them, they are mellower than the other people interviewed and the colors in the frame are darker than those of the other farmers. The industrial farmers also have a little dog with them that looks absolutely ragged, mirroring the image the film producers are trying to portray of industrial farming.

Fresh is targeted to those who don’t really think about their food habits much; those who are not firmly entrenched into the industrial farming side or the alternative farming methods. It attempts to persuade their audience to support the alternative farmers by buying the products that they sell. Even if you only “spend 10 dollars a week” on these alternative farming products the impact is still significant according to Fresh. While the film has a clear bias in attempting to get people to buy the products that these alternative farmers sell they are relatively fair in their assessment of the food industry situation and attempt to present both sides. They do not however highlight some of the reasons people would farm in industrial way other than monetary reasons and there are advantages to industrial farming beyond monetary (though monetary is the main reason for it).

The only place I had a problem with the film is when the question of Genetically Modified Organisms came up. It was never directly addressed and only briefly mentioned by several of the alternative farmers. One of the farmers stated something along the lines of I like the modern technology in the farming industry but I would never use that genetically modified stuff. There is no real reason given as to why not to use the genetically modified organisms yet every person interviewed seems to just brush them away as if they are clearly a inferior choice that isn’t even worth considering.

Entry #10: Starting Over

There are times in our life where we have to look back and evaluate the choices we have made that have led us to where we are. Sometimes we find that we are not where we want to be, somewhere along the way we stepped off the path we thought life would take us and onto a path we never wanted to be. For me that time was my first attempt at college. I had followed my high school girlfriend to college, giving up a full ride at NAU to pay my own way at U of A. At the time I made every excuse in the book; I wasn’t following her, NAU just wasn’t as strong as U of A in the program I wanted pursue, Flagstaff is too cold and I wouldn’t be happy there, I liked the school spirit at U of A, my cousin went to U of A and was really successful. Really though the deciding factor was her. This decision was the decision where I stepped off the path I wanted to be on and took my life in a direction I never thought it would take. I wasn’t happy at U of A having a pre-existing social structure led me to not expand my social structure nearly as much as I expected to. I wasn’t making new friends I didn’t dive into my studies I floundered instead of flourished. Three years later I was still at U of A, I was still dating the girl I followed to U of A but our relationship was tense. My schoolwork didn’t improve and I was in danger of being expelled. I was suffering from a deep depression and hardly was able to get out of bed each day.

Something had to change and so I restarted my life. The girl I was dating and I broke up in what was a semi-amicable break up. I moved back home with my parents and restarted my academic career, attending Glendale Community College. Now I have been very successful with my new life. I have been making new friends, rediscovering who I am and maintaining a 4.0 GPA. I am seeing a therapist and my depression is under control; I am happier now than I have been the last 3 years. This new found success is due to the fact that I hit rock bottom and decided I needed a change in my life, a drastic one.

Sometimes it takes that drastic change to get the life that you want to live. It was terrifying leaving the comfort of a relationship I had come to rely on, the social structure I had built for myself, to go into something new. The pay off was there though. Had I stayed in Tucson attending U of A nothing would have changed, my life would have continued to decline until there was absolutely nothing left to live for anymore.

Entry 8: Schemings

As I have mentioned previously I am a huge gamer. There is a continuum of games where the influence of luck versus skill trades off with each other. At the far end are games such as Chess and Go where other than who goes first players start out as perfect equals and there is only the difference in player skill to determine the winner. These games feature a wealth of choices for players to make, they are very unrestricted in strategy that must be used and there is an incredible variation in how the games end up; there are more variations a game of Go can be played than the number of atoms in the universe. Opposite to those games are simple board games such as monopoly where the outcome of a game is usually determined by who rolled the dice better or spun a spinner to more advantageous numbers. In these games players may make one or two decisions but usually it is evident which choice is the better one and the strategy in these games is simplistic enough for children to understand. For some people to fun of a game is all about the luck involved and so they gravitate towards game such as monopoly, life and war. One of my favorite past times is playing card games. Card games take on a different role when compare to other types of games. Card games generally are a contest against other players, a battle of the wits where the only thing determine the winner is a small amount of luck and mostly skill; they are close to the chess/go end of things but luck takes enough of a role in things to keep it interesting.

The most popular card game would probably be poker, a game where players make bets against each other on how “good” their hand is compared to the other players. All players start at the odds, same as with chess, they all play with the same deck and as such have the same chance as any other player of drawing a specific card. Where the strategy comes in is with betting. Players acquire information about the cards in their opponent’s hands based on body language and the way other players are betting. This is the aspect where strategy comes in, betting in such a way as to mislead your opponents and get them to make the wrong movements.

The main card games I play are less well known yet still incredibly popular. Magic the Gathering is one of my favorites, a trading card game with a fantasy theme where players utilize a resource called mana that is produced by specific cards in their deck to cast spells, summon creatures, and attempt to lower their opponents health to zero in order to win the game. In this game there is a large card pool players are restricted to build their decks out of but each player will have different cards in their deck. This adds an element of strategy that poker does not have, the element of deck making. Some decks will be inherently better than others or have a strategy that is a counter to a different deck’s strategy. Unfortunately this adds an aspect of “pay to play” to the game as the cards are not free and generally the more powerful a card is the more expensive it will be. Magic and Poker cross over greatly; many famous Magic players go on to play poker as there is more money in that game than in the professional Magic scene. Players in Magic gain information through body language as well as the other cards the player has played so far. Often cards that can be used synergistically together will appear in the same deck so if a player knows what cards work well together in the pool of available cards then they will have an advantage in that they can predict the other cards in a player’s deck.

Unlike poker Magic has a lot of direct interaction with other players. Cards will directly influence the opponent’s game plan, such as cards that stop opponents from casting spells or destroying each other’s creatures. This aspect is the aspect that makes Magic more enjoyable for me than poker, there is something very satisfying about unraveling an opponent’s game plan and watching the plans they were making crumble.

Enty #9: The Slime is Pink but Does it Stink?

Watching the pink slime video linked below, it is obvious why the public could be scared of this so called “Pink Slime”. It looks like Play-Doh more than what people identify as food. But is this mix something that should have actually caused such a wide spread scandal? Something that completely changed the way people consumed meat for years to come, reshaping the beef industry in a moment. Really all the media did was hype something, they provided a scary picture, a scary sounding chemical name and said this is what you are eating; nothing more. People are afraid of what they don’t understand and it seems like this fear extends greatly into the realm of food. Society by and large has become very detached from the means of production that our food comes from so when biased information appears they do not have the necessary background to necessarily notice that bias. Listening to video itself it is clear the reporters are not presenting all of the facts nor are they presenting the facts they do have in a fair way that remotely reflects both sides. They go so far as to make objectively false claims such as “the US has no standards” while talking about regulations. Clearly they have never heard of the FDA before or the amount of regulation that actually does go into the food American’s eat. They justify this claim by comparing it to what a McDonald’s Canadian spokesperson claims that “we would never use such a disgusting product in our food”. Maybe that statement had nothing to do with the quality of the product or regulation are rather had more to do with the fact the Canadian spokesperson wanted to distance themselves from the scandal happening in the US. Bad press is bad for business and if you have to throw someone else under the bus in order to keep your name in the clear than that is just good business practice.

When it is examined more closely it would make sense for the “pink slime” beef to look exactly how it does. It is “extremely finely ground meat” and what happens when you grind something as fine as they did in the case of the beef? It becomes a paste or a “slime” so to speak. Using a chemical to eliminate bacteria isn’t unheard of either and the practice of which was allowed by the FDA, declared safe for human consumption. The new way that lean, finely ground meat is being treated is through citric acid. Citric acid is a chemic that naturally occurs in citrus fruit such as lemons and limes. This process appears to appeal more to consumers and as the price of beef is increasing the demand for lean finely ground meat is increasing, showing once again that consumers care more about the price of a product than any other factor. Even misleading press releases that create a scare in the population. 

Entry 3: Future Tech

Technology has increased at an exponential rate and the more it increases the more we integrate it into our lives. The above video shows an Indian company working on a technology to truly integrate the technological, virtual, world with the physical world. This technology is incredible in the way it works and I believe technology like this would significantly change the way we live our lives.

Having everything connected to the internet, the ability to look things up and have everything seamlessly integrate together seems like a fantasy right now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a reality in the future. It seems like this technology combined with technology like Google glass could create a world where the way we work, live and interact is completely different than the one we are living in today.

I have read several Sci-Fi novels that deal with the concept of augmented reality. Often they create a world where the have and the have nots are even more separate than they are now. Those who can afford the augmented reality technology are the only ones who can truly work and succeed in the society, those without the technology don’t integrate into the world and as such cannot really be true citizens of the society.

Despite some warnings about the problems augmented reality technology could create for society the technology is still exciting and one I hope to see in my lifetime. If used carefully this tech could connect the world in ways never seen before and increase the potential for human achievement beyond what it already is. 

Entry 4: Showings

There are a lot of activities to do to keep oneself entertained in the Phoenix, Arizona area. For almost entire life I have been a major theatre kid. From 6^th grade throughout high school I was always involved with some type of theatre production, whether it be community or with my school. It should come as no surprise then that I enjoy watching theatre just as much as I enjoy acting in it.

This past weekend I watched two different productions of Broadway level performances. The first was Les Miserables produced by Theatre Works. The second was Cabaret at Gammage Theatre, with the Broadway travelling cast. The cast of Theatre Works are some of the most talented young people from across Arizona. The youngest in the cast was a talented 9 year old boy who played the role of Gavroche the oldest was only 18.

Les Miserables is my favorite musical of all time portraying a love story that happens during the French revolution and the power of what can happen when someone is given a chance to make a difference in the world. Theatre Works did an amazing job with their performance. For such a young crowd their vocals were amazing, the acting powerful and their professionalism unmatched. I unashamedly cried at least 6 times during the performance, the actors portraying such powerful emotions on stage. There is something about hearing a room reverberate with the sound of 50 people singing about freedom, revolution and standing up for the downtrodden that I couldn’t help but be moved to tears.

Cabaret has a completely different feel to it than Les Miserables did. Cabaret is show about pre-Nazi Berlin portraying two different love interests and is highly symbolic in nature. I found the first act to be incredibly weak, the writing relies entirely on the sensuality of the dance numbers to keep the audience entertained and does not care much substance to it. I began tracking when characters were portrayed smoking because it was more interesting to try and analyze for symbolic meaning than to pay attention to what was happening with the plot. The first hour and a half provides nothing but exposition with the conflict of the play being introduced less than 5 minutes before intermission. With a weak first act the second act does everything it can do to remedy the mistakes made in the first act. The ending is powerful, it takes the conflict that is introduced in the second and act resolves it in an amazing and heart stopping way.

If you were to be looking for a play to go see I would recommend Les Miserables. While the cast of Cabaret was very skilled and professional the script doesn’t hold up to be worth paying the price to see a play at Gammage. The fact that the cast of Les Miserables is so young brings to life the skill they truly possess and makes the performance even more powerful than it already is. 

Entry 6: Fun and Games

Why I game

All my life I have played games of one form or another. It all started when the neighbors across the street got a PlayStation, the original one. I hung out with them a lot and they were always more athletic than I was. So any athletically based game they won, I had no chance. But here came this amazing machine. This machine where suddenly I was the one winning some of the games we played. The great equalizer.

From there my own interest in gaming did not diminish. Eventually I got my own Playstation and eventually a Game Boy to join in the hand held craze as well. When I was in Boy Scouts I saw some of the older boys playing an interesting looking card game with fantasy characters that looked very intense and interesting. I learned the game was Magic: The Gathering and thus began my journey into card gaming as well. During my first year in college some of the people in a club I joined invited me over for “game night” where we played a myriad of board games that I had never imagined even existed, from games of superheroes teaming up to beat a villain, to murder mystery games to games where you attempt to build the best train line across a continent.

Each different type of gaming fulfills a different need but they all share a universal joy for me and have become a passion of mine. Gaming creates a field where all start out as equals, using only skill and luck to win the day. For me this battle of the wits, the pitting of strategy against one another is one of the greatest draws to gaming. Seeing how others strategize and plan gives real insight into who they are as a person, where they see strength and weakness and what aspects they like to develop. For example I have a game where you acquire and use cards to spread influence on a board, trying to take the most territory for yourself. At the end of the game the value of your territories and your deck is added together and whoever has the most points wins. There are varying approaches you can take to acquiring the most points. For example the way I play I like to acquire as much territory as possible and play a very aggressive strategy. I enjoy the feeling of overwhelming an opponent while I play and so my go to strategy for this game is one of conquest. Another one of my friends likes to see cool things happen and so while he will never have the best position on the board or the most powerful deck his cards will interact in ways that will lead to interesting and sometimes powerful effects happening. He likes seeing each of the different parts come together to form a potent combination. Another plays for the long game and tries to ignore the board completely instead trying to build the most valuable deck possible. If the game goes on without end his strategy would be the most powerful revealing that he likes to think in long term plans but can sometimes oversee the benefits of short term planning. Often if the game comes to a surprise ending he will have the lowest points as his strategy got the most disrupted by the sudden change.

Entry 5: The Future

Watching the above clip from Wall-E is very disturbing to many of us. It reflects a little too accurately the way society is evolving, at least in my opinion. Humans interact solely through screens, even if they are in the same location as each other, requiring machines to get around and no even having the ability to walk. Watching the clip makes me incredibly sad for the future of humanity and calls into question the way we interact with technology now.

The future portrayed in the clip is a very dark and ominous future. It makes me think of times in my life where I have chosen to interact with technology rather than with real, material things. I have a group of friends which I play video games with and interact with over Skype. There have been times where we could have met up and done something together but instead we chose to talk over the internet and play video games together at our individual houses. Personally I feel it is less fulfilling to interact with each other in that manner, I prefer the face to face, real human interaction. The virtual interaction does have its merits however. There are times when we cannot all meet up in person and I still get to spend times with my friends, and it feels close to having them in the same room with me. I believe the problem comes when we interact solely with technology and ignore the real life interactions, a future portrayed in the clip. Humans must safeguard themselves from falling into this trap of solely virtual interaction if we do not want the future of Wall-E to become a reality. We must watch ourselves and others, ensuring that real interaction is happening as well as virtual.

 Humans, fat and floating on chairs, represent the way we get around now, we rely on cars for transportation, and while there are trips we need them for, other times people take them for trips they could have walked instead. More and more we rely on automated transportation rather than moving around the old fashion way. Furthermore, it highlights a decreased level of activity in the human condition in general; when the man in the video falls out of his chair he doesn’t even have the strength to get back into it. The way these people live their lives mirrors the way we live our own, albeit taken to the extreme. They turn to machines for easy and quick satisfaction, not willing to put long term effort into something for long term pay off.

The screens in front of the people of the clip are clear symbols for the way we interact with cellphones in the modern day. More and more people walk around with their cellphone in front of their face, not present in their current environment, instead existing in the virtual one. We ignore those around us when are heads are buried into our cell phones. The clip shows how unaware people are of their surroundings when Wall-E was attempting to get to Eva and the large woman interacting with her screen kept blocking him unintentionally. It was only when Wall-E disabled her screen did she notice his presence and let him pass. Furthermore, when the woman’s screen was disabled she stared in wonder at the world around her in wonder, not having seen it for a while: too busy interacting with her screen to take note of the beauty around her until forced to turn the screen off.

Commercialism is rampant in the clip. The people’s screens are littered with advertisements, ads cover the landscape of the ship, and there is no escaping a corporate sponsored message to be found. An announcement can be heard over the loud speakers “Buy and Large, Everything you need to be happy. Your day is very important to us” implying that material objects are the things that make us happy. When the children are taught the alphabet “B” was taught in the context of “Buy and Large, Your very best friend” indoctrinating children into a reliance and love for the corporation. It appears that Buy and Large is the entity that runs the ship, adding a sinister tone to the clip where not only are the people mindlessly consuming from a corporation, but that that corporation is also actually their government. Portraying the corporation as the controlling entity speaks heavily to the way many people view modern politics, viewing corporations as the real decision makers behind the government rather than the people; the people mindlessly following along with whatever the corporate “best friends” would have them believe.

Wall-E presents a terrifying future for humanity yet it is not necessarily the future we are destined to have. With carefully safeguarding our ideals and watching our actions we can find the balance between reliance on and use of technology. Technology should be something to enhance life rather than replace it.

Entry #2: Off the Beaten Path

Today I want to talk about an activity that not many people know exists, caving. Caving is an activity where people go out explore, survey and conserve the wonderful caves to be found around them. This is a hobby that I have recently gotten into and it has already taken me on some wild adventures,

The first time I seriously went caving was with a friend named Azure to Peppersauce Cave, located about an hour outside of Tucson. After departing from Tucson we took a tiny two lane highway through the small town of Oracle and into the mountains. Before reaching the cave you drive through a small campsite tucked away into a small valley and hidden by trees known as Peppersauce Campground. To find the cave entrance you have to already know where you are looking, there is a small pull off on one of the nearby roads that serves as a parking lot for those visiting the cave. Crossing the road from the parking lot you descend into a valley via a trail not visible from the road. A short walk along this trail and you come to a sign mapping out the cave and giving a little history of it. The map details two entrances to the cave, one forward and to the right the other off to the left. We chose to explore the entrance toward the right. This "entrance" was a crack in the cliff face at an approximate 135 degree angle from the ground. The outside was spray painted with warning label of danger along with some skull and cross bones. Figuring this to be a prank done by some bored teenagers and no real danger was to be had, we turned on our flashlights and entered the crevice.

                                          Picture Courtesy of: experience-az.com

We slid along the rocky surface for about 30 minutes, never able to really stand, more laying on the angled rock. The crevice was only about a foot and a half wide and narrowed at points to where I had to align my body so that my neck was going through pinch points, rock scraping at either side of it. Finally after 30 minutes there was a small round opening at the bottom of the crevice, what we assumed was the opening into the main cave. As I peered into the opening I saw a small chamber, barely big enough for a small teenage girl to curl up into the fetal position in that was completely encapsulate, there was no bigger cave that this crevice led to. As it turns out this entrance was no longer usable to get to the main cave, we had gone the wrong way.

Another 30 minute trek back out of the crevice and we stumbled upon a kind group of older men who pointed out to us where the real entrance was. You had to follow the trail further and then turn to look up at the cliff wall. There was a section where several roots stood out of the wall forming a ladder like structure sturdy enough to be climbed on. Climbing those roots we came to a small ledge and the actual entrance to the cave.

The entrance, just a tiny hole in the cliff face led to a small chamber with another, even tinier hole in the wall. Once inside this first chamber you could see graffiti everywhere, mostly people writing their name. The cave is mostly made of clay, meaning that even crawling through that first hole we began to get covered in the stuff, there was no way of exploring this cave with getting utterly filthy. On we went under this second hole into a large room, pitch black except for our head lights. In this room there were several holes, looking almost like slides that lead off beyond where our flashlights could see. We opted to be safe and stay well away from these, not knowing what lurked at the bottom of the wild ride down the slide.

The cave is about a half mile deep with several rooms linked together all similar to the one we first entered. At the back of the cave is where the real experience is, a large underground lake. To get to the lake you start at an overhang with a ladder attached to it. Climbing down the ladder you come to a slick clay landing that slopes steeply away on either side. Carefully making out way off the landing there the floor slopes all the way down to the lake, slippery all the way. From there on we crept along the path making sure to keep at least 3 points of contact with the ground, making sure we didn't slip down into the lakes murky waters.

After the visiting the lake we began to head back, retracing our steps through the cave. The graffiti on the walls became incredibly helpful here as there were numerous arrows pointing to the exit. The exit itself is nearly impossible to find without these arrows, being a one and a half square foot hole at the bottom of the wall, cloaked completely in darkness. 

Climbing out of the darkness and into the light we found that we were as expected covered in mud. Luckily we had planned ahead and brought a change of clothes with us so that we didn't have to endure the filth throughout the car ride home. 

This experience opened me to the world of caving. I sought out a local group that does this as a hobby and gives people access to more advanced and dangerous caves, and will be attending one of their meetings shortly. There is no other feeling in the world like feeling rock on all sides of you, going into the depths of the earth to see what is hidden their. 

Entry #1: Where Things Get Meta

Having already introduced myself in the previous blog we can get right into business about what I know all of you are here to know, my opinion about blogging. Well, honestly I never have been a fan of blogs. I have always seen them as something lonely housewives do to try and reach out to the world and interact with it in ways they haven't been able to acheive in their day to day life.

Well that was my opinion anyways until I started looking into what blogging was really all about. Blogging is as varied as people are, while there is the boring blog that is only relevant those who personally know the author there is also a vast expanse of general interest and special interest blogs that would appeal to a wide variety of people, myself included.

One blog that I have visited for years without even realizing was actually a blog was Post Secret. This is a blog where people send in post cards with secrets written on them which are then published on the blog. This blog is interesting as you get insight into people's personal thoughts and experience. There is often reoccurring themes such as a drive towards suicide or trouble within marriage that helps those struggling with those issues see that they aren't the only one in that situation and feel like maybe there is hope for them if others were able to overcome those obstacles in their life.  This blog connects people in ways not possible in daily life. The aspect of anonymity let's users openly share their darkest secrets without ever being revealed, sometimes the internet is the only place these secrets ever get told. Psychology shows it is healthy to let go of things rather than keeping them bottled in and Post Secret gives users a place to do just that.

The layout of Post Secret is very simple, letting the images speak for themselves with little to no interpretative text. When there is interpretive text then it is usually a translation of a language other than English or a single sentence that gives greater context to the entry. The black background makes the website seem serious, somber and highlights the secret nature of the website. The black pairs well with the often dark content of the post cards, yet the white text emphasizes the message of hope the blog tries to convey; the light shining through the darkness.

Another blog with a similar style to Post Secret is The Sartorialist. The Sartorialist appears to be a fashion blog. Now high fashion is not something I have any knowledge of and the website is presented in such a way that I believe requires existing knowledge of high fashion to enjoy. As with Post Secret a simple mono-chromatic background is chosen, this time white. There are pictures of people wearing fashionable clothing with the only text being when and where the picture was taken. The blog claims to create a "two-way conversation on fashion" a claim which it fails to reach. There is no conversation going on as far as I am aware, merely pictures being presented saying "this is fashion" with no expounding on what that means or why the pictures are fashionable.

While the above blogs are very serious in their presentation there are also blogs which are much more light-hearted in nature, such as the blog Dog Shaming. Dog Shaming is a blog where people post pictures of their dog with a written message about something they did wrong, publicly "shaming" the dog for their wrongful behavior. The background for this website is a wooden floor with dog prints on it, creating a playful image as one imagines little dogs scampering across the floor, making those prints.

After doing research and actually opening my mind to the possibility that their may be more to blogging than I first thought I have come to appreciate them more. The blogs that I can form a connection with such as Post Secret and Dog Shaming add value to my life, allowing an online community to form and interact with the content provided while those I do not connect with such as Sartorialist hold no interest for me as I don't feel like I can interact with them in any meaningful way.

Entry #0 Introduction

Hey all, this is Alex, a current student at GCC publishing my first blog post. I am a huge gamer and love playing both board and video games. In addition to gaming I explore all over Arizona, going both caving and hiking. At GCC I study business and will be transferring to a University to get a degree in either accounting or finance.