Soundtrack to my life!

"I Made It"- Kevin Rudolf. I always play this song super loud in my room whenever I feel like I reached a really big goal in my life. I remember putting this song on repeat when I received my acceptance letter to UW-Madison.

"Scars"- Papa Roach. I love this song and I listen to it a lot. It's a bit depressing but I still like it. My favorite line of the song is "our scars remind us that the past is real," which is so true!

"Danza Kuduro" - Don Omar. This is a song in Spanish and Portuguese. It's so much fun to dance to and I always listen to it when I'm in a good mood. Don Omar is very popular in latin communities all over north, central, and south america. I have several of his songs but I must say this is my all-time favorite!

"Lesson Learned" - Alicia Keys. This song definitely applies to me in different ways. I have made plenty of mistakes, some really stupid ones, but kind of like Alicia says, lets just call it a lesson learned. This song helps me think about my mistakes and helps me see how I can learn from them.

Research Exercise

“The cell-phone phenomenon reaches way beyond teenagers. There are 180 million cell-phone subscribers in the U.S. today, and we are no longer simply talking or text messaging or gaming” (Thottam et al, 2005).

Thottam, J. et al. (2005). How kids set the (ring) tone. Time, 165 (14). Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=25d7ce89-cb9f-4689a6130f040fc3c729%40sessionmgr112&vid=7&hid=104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mth&AN=16552709

This is an article I came across at the UW-Madison Libraries website. It is an issue from Time, which I believe is a pretty reliable source. It doesn’t have as much information as I would like to see but the information it provides is very interesting and can be useful for me in terms of my research paper. I think just by looking at this quote I can use this source as part of my lit review because it gives the reader a view on how much technology is incorporated in the everyday lives of young people. I would really like to use this source but I know I will need to get plenty of other sources as well.

“Kids have grown up to expect a two-way conversation, not a one-way lecture. This interactive reflex has a profound effect on what one academic has called their "habits of mind." Instead of simply absorbing information — from a teacher or even a book — they go out and find it” (Tapscott, 2008).

Tapscott, D. (2008). How digital technology has changed the brain. Business Week Online. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=25d7ce89-cb9f-4689a6130f040fc3c729%40sessionmgr112&vid=11&hid=104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mth&AN=35395968

This is also another article I found by browsing UW-Madison’s Library homepage. This article is from Business Week Online that I thought was really interesting and is directly correlated to the topic I am writing about in my paper. I think this would also work really well with my literature review but I think it would also support my argument throughout my whole paper. I think this is a better source to use than the first one because it provides more information and it helps answer my research question a little better.

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Last Ronson Blog!

Chapter 10 focused on how labels are placed on different types of mental disorders. The chapter started out with a Scientology banquet that Ronson was invited to. There he saw that these scientologists were coming up with the most outrageous mental disorders with no real logical sense behind them whatsoever. Later on in the chapter, Spitzer gets introduced and it is explained that he becomes an editor for the DSM and has this goal of, in the DSM, getting rid of all the judgment from psychiatry. David Rosenhan was a psychologist who, much like Spitzer, was very opposed to psychoanalysis because he believed it to be of no use. He showed it’s uselessness by conducting an experiment involving seven other people who were sent to different mental hospitals and pretended to be mentally ill. All of them were identified as insane and were not allowed to leave the hospitals until they were fully “recovered.” Because of this experiment, psychiatry was not very accepted in the world of medicine. Another example in this chapter of the problems with psychiatry was the incidence with Rebecca Riley. Her parents gave her cold medicine and her bipolar medication one night when Rebecca had a cold and could not sleep. The next morning she was found dead and it was concluded that she died from an overdose of the drugs her parents gave her, which weren’t approved for distribution to children. Rebecca was only three years old and was taking ten pills a day ever since she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her mother was then asked in an interview if she believed her daughter was really bipolar. She answered, “Probably not.”

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this book because there were so many parts in the book that I found very confusing, like the previous chapter about the conspiracy theorists. But there were also parts that I found to be very intriguing, like everything that happened in chapter 10. I guess I have an ambivalent feeling towards this book. The ending could've been better because it didn't explain what the point or meaning was of the idea, "being of nothingness." Based on all that happened in the book, I think Ronson himself could've very well lacked some sanity, which also made me think about everyone else in the world. It's possible that everyone could be a tad insane. 

Ronson: Chapters 8 and 9

In chapter 8, David Shayler is introduced. He was a big conspiracy theorist who led many people to believe that Rachel North, a victim of a terrorist attack, did not actually exist and that none of this ever happened. Throughout the chapter, Shayler brought out more of his madness when he claimed that the 9/11 planes were not actually planes but missiles and later on identified himself as a Messiah. He even escaped the public eye a little before calling himself a Messiah by dressing himself as a woman and naming himself Delores. After all this, Shayler was shut out from the media. 

I thought both of these chapters were pretty interesting. Especially chapter 8 because conspiracy theories really capture my attention simply because they're a bit strange. It's so intriguing to see people take out all their energy and time and venture it all into coming up with these crazy stories to explain events as extreme as terrorist attacks. These chapters made me think about how people feed off of what others say and then go on to engrave it in other people's brains. It's weird how the world works like that. 

Gladwell's "Something Borrowed"

In "Something Borrowed," by Malcolm Gladwell, plagiarism is examined in depth. Gladwell looks at plagiarism by talking about a play called, "Frozen." The play was written by Bryony but it just so happened that Lavery's play was pretty much the exact same story that was in Dorothy Lewis's book, "Guilty by Reason of Insanity." Gladwell uses that as an example of a major plagiarism case and then goes on to talk about other plagiarizing cases, such as with music, papers, and all sorts texts. One of the many questions Gladwells asks is why didn't Lavery credit any of her sources? Gladwell meets with Lavery and Lavery, after reading all the reviews on her play, then realizes how wrong she was in doing that and feels ashamed of what she did.

I didn't like how Lavery used such childish excuses for why she didn't ask to use certain ideas that weren't hers. It didn't really make any logical sense to me that Lavery didn't know what she was doing wasn't right.   I just thought that was really weird. Overall, I feel like Gladwell did a good job in showing the reader how wrong it is to plagiarize. I feel like sometimes one can be copying someone else's work without even knowing but there are certain lines one absolutely cannot cross when it comes to using others' ideas.

Chapter 7 Summary: The Right Sort of Madness

In this chapter Ronson meets a woman named Charlotte who worked with different television programs including Trisha and Jerry Springer. Basically she looked for people who were considered "mad enough" to be candidates for the show she worked with. She explained to Ronson that she would asses their madness on the medications they were taking. She also talked about how her and others would mock and laugh at the candidates. At the very end of the chapter Ronson comes to the conclusion that what Charlotte does for a living is wrong and makes him feel a little better because what he is doing isn't nearly as bad.

I thought chapter 6 and 7 were interesting chapters, especially chapter 7. I never would've imagined people doing this for shows like Jerry Springer. It makes me think about how far people are willing to go to put on a good show. Even for journalists, I think many are more than willing to cross the line in order to bring a really juicy story to the public. I guess that's just how show biz works in many cases.

Blog #3

How is technology shaping today's youth?

I chose this question because I myself am part of what we call, "Generation Y." Many people have negative views towards my generation because it has been said that teenagers and adolescents are selfish, lack respect, and rely way too much on technology. Older generations believe that the world of teenagers is absorbed by technology and more technological advances will only negatively impact the younger generations.

I think this is a question with numerous answers. With this topic being so popular, I think I would be able to find endless amounts of data and research. In terms of a 10-page paper, I feel like it would be helpful to look at teenagers from other parts of the world and not just focus only on American teenagers. I think a good way to start is to look at the academic performances of teenagers in relation to the amount of technology used everyday by teenagers. It would also be good to look at how much time teenagers spend every day on their ipods or computers.