Minecraft

There is a virus sweeping the halls of the Huckleberry Learning Center! This epidemic is so horrible that almost everyone in contact with it becomes so addicted that they cannot focus on either their studies or their writing! But this is not an ordinary virus, the name of this pandemic is Minecraft! The super addicting computer game has created a cult following of over seven million people. Minecraft is a sandbox game made independently by Markus Persson aka "Notch".

Minecraft has many advantages over other games. It works with Windows, Macintosh and linux. It's low graphical requirement is good for people with cheap computers. It is different than any other game, because it combines the model on a first person shooter, but does not focus on shooting. It allows creativity unheard of in most games. Anyone can learn to play it. The size of the game is so small that even people with dial-up can download it.  It also has a server based multiplayer mode that allows people from across the globe to play together. It is so vast that it is nearly impossible to say "I beat the game."

The entire game is made of blocks. The sun and moon are made of blocks. You are made of blocks. There are literally dozens if kinds of blocks: dirt, sand, stone, water, wood, ect. ect. ect. The player can make tools such as a pickaxe or hatchet in order to mine blocks more quickly. The basic control scheme is simple, with the WASD keys to move and then the mouse to aim and left and right clicking to place or mine a block.

Minecraft is a sandbox game. You can make anything provided that it can be built with blocks. Creations range from a full size Arc de Triomphe to the Empire State Building to the USS Enterprise. There was even a team that made the entire [enter expletive of your choice] Kanto, Johto and Hoenn regions of the Pokemon universe, out of blocks. The only limiting factor is the players imagination.

One on the most addicting games ever made, Minecraft is also one of the best independent games ever made. Due to its accessibility, it is a game for everyone. At $20 it is inexpensive and very much worth it. For anyone with an excess of both creativity and time, this is the game for you.

Should schools teach propaganda techniques?

Should schools be required to teach propaganda techniques? Many things are not taught in schools that should be taught and many things are taught in schools that are a waste of time. Teaching about propaganda is not only helpful, it has become nessecery. Children are apt to believe anything they hear, thats why children will get into stranger's cars for candy. Unless children are taught not to believe everything they hear, then things can only get worse. As long as children are manipulated there is no excuse not to provide them with propaganda material. We should give children the ability to defend themselves against one of their biggest threts: Child advertising.

One of the reasons that children are in danger is because of child advertising. It is estimated that by age 21, children view 1,000,000 commercials on television alone. It is now impossible to go to a children's website or television network without being swamped by endless Barbie, Disney and/or Mattel ads. It isn't until eight years old that kids start to be able to tell the difference between a tv show and an ad. This fact not only requires that children should learn about propaganda at an early age, it also may indicate the need for a restriction on advertising aimed at children below eight years of age. Even later in a child's life they are still suscptible to being tricked into buying things they don't care for. It's fashionable or cool to use these products: you will become more popular if you buy that. Children are manipulated into buying anything and everything.

The second way that companies advertise to children is through peers and celebrities. Most clothing brands advertise by tags and designs. The cool kids wear expensive clothes, have expensive backpacks and purses and have expensive electronics. This has been because of careful controlling of popular culture by such companies in order to make more profit. Such items effectively stand as a status symbol. Celebrities earn large capital simply for saying that they use a certain product. The only reason that most athletes earn enough to eat is because companies pay them to endorse shoes or a certain brand of perfume. Film and television stars also apear in ads to make more money, such as Lady Gaga advertising for mac cosmetics or James Dean promoting safe driving (he died in a car accident). Many cartoon characters have also advertised food (and/or cigarettes, in the case of the Flintstones.) Even Pope Leo the XIII got in on the action: by advertising for alcohol!

Some say that teaching about propaganda isn't necessary. They give several reasons: because our schools are out of money we can't afford to teach it, that it isn't important for children to learn about and it would disrupt the system of advertising in general. The first reason self contradictory for one simple reason, because of people spending irresponsibly in the 80's and 90's we are in a financial crisis that almost turned into a depression. As for where to get the money, raise taxes on the rich. The second reason has been answered by this entire essay and the third relies solely on making more profit and its time that children be put first, then corporations.

In this essay I have shown why children need help. They are constantly berated with ads telling them to buy things they don't want or need. Even their role models tell them to buy products they wouldn't consider. Since their are no good reasons against it and many good reasons for it  and unless corporations back off, kids need to be taught about propaganda.

    Advertisements drive people crazy. It's a fact. There in no one who will stand up and say "I like ads". A few may make us smile and feel warm inside, but the vast majority are designed to hammer a message into our heads. In the time between the 50's and the 70's advertising companies would use "jingles" and like LSD never completely disappear. Since the dot-com explosion advertising has become both better and worse. Programs such as google have made ads unobtrusive, even helpful; Spam is the counterbalance. Ads in magazines have been around almost as ling as the magazines have, such as the one I am going to comment on. This is an ad from Parenting, on why people should buy Nutella. It makes use of stereotypes, image identification and logical and pathetic appeals.

   This advertisement uses the stereotypes of the (single or stay-at-home) mother making breakfast, happy smiling children and healthy "balanced" breakfast. The single or stay at home stereotype is identified in this ad by 1. The hair colour 2. Clothing 3. Lack of cleavage 4. Holding a child 5. Spotless kitchen. This stereotype is used to target other single/stay-at-home mothers and to say that Nutella makes breakfast easy. The second stereotype is the happy smiling children. This ad uses this stereotype in order to portray Nutella as the cause of the happiness. The last stereotype is the myth of the "Balanced Breakfast." The reason for using this is to create the illusion that Nutella is a part of a balanced breakfast or even that Nutella can be a part of one.

Advertising companies create connections between one  (negative) product and one (positive) product. Nutella is obviously unhealthy, but it is put on whole grain bread, thereby making it "healthy." It is implied that Nutella is good for you. Plates of fruit cover most of the table, the rest being covered by cups of milk and orange juice. Nutella is also used to signify that making breakfast can be simple and easy. The image of a clean kitchen seems to be connected the fact that using Nutella on bread does not require cooking: no cleaning. The woman's hair and makeup are styled perfectly, as are the children's. Hence the fast part of making breakfast.

This ad makes use of strange mental links called "keywords." It makes use of several words: unique, wholesome, roasted, nutritious, delicious flavor, tasty, good. These all try to paint Nutella in a positive light. A few of the other text tricks are the use of numbers to confuse the reader and the ingredients are "high quality" ingredients. It also mentions a lack of artificial preservatives.

A book review on The Fellowship of the Ring

                                                     All that is gold does not glitter,

                                                       Not all those who wander are lost;

                                                       The old that is strong does not wither,

                                                       Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

                                                       From the ashes a fire shall be woken.

                                                       A light from the shadows shall spring;

                                                       Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

                                                       The crownless again shall be king.

The Fellowship of the Ring was a book written by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is the first of a trilogy describing the history of the war between Sauron and the rest of middle earth. My mother had been telling me about The lord of the Rings my entire life. So ever since I first turned the pages of the prequil, The Hobbit, I have been hooked. The Fellowship of the Ring is no different, it is entertaining and an epic.

As England had very little mythology of it's own Tolkien tried to invent it. His effort was a triumph! The story was completly origional (which is more than you can say for books written now) and is the greatest epic since Homer. The story is about a young hobbit named Frodo who is given a quest to take the one ring (a ring made with the greater part of the power of the dark lord Sauron) and destroy it in the crack of doom. It sounds easy enough, unless you consider that the dark lord does not want the ring destroyed and sends armies to recover it or that the crack of doom is in the heart of the enemy teratory.

Frodo is not alone on this journey, he is joined by eight faithful companions such as the wizard Gandalf or the elf Legolas. Frodo is a hobbit. He is brave, selfless and the most unlikely person to be chosen for the task. Representing the Hobbits are Frodo's friends Sam, Merry and Pippin. Sam is fiercely loyal to Frodo. Merry is the son of the master of Bucklandand cousin to Frodo. Pippin is the of the Thain in Tookland and also a cousen of Frodo. Hobbits are smallish relatives of men that are between two and four feet tall. Hobbits like the unadventrus lifestyle of farming and eating. They have at least seven meals a day and live in underground houses in hillsides. Gandalf the Grey is a wizard. He wields emmence power and is very knowlagible about many things. He also leads the fellowship. The wizards were sent by the Valar (gods) to help the peoples of middle earth in their fight against Sauron. Legolas is an elven prince who wields a bow and is chosen as one of the represet the elves. The elves are an imortal race created before men and have become estranged from men by this time in the history of middle earth. Gimli represents the Dwarves as one of the nine companions. Dwarves are a sturdy and strong race that are skilled in mining and metalwork, but too often succumb to greed after what they mine for. Representiong men are Boromir and Aragorn. Boromir is the proud son of the steward of Gondor (The last city defending middle earth against Sauron). Aragorn is one of the central charicters of the story. First introduced as Strider, Aragorn desteny is bound up with the story of the one ring.

Tolkien has created a new world, complete with its own extensive history and its own languages. Unlike most books today, Tolkien put a large effort into describing the distintcion between good and evil. He states it is impossible to be both good and evil or to use evil against evil. Several times Frodo tries to give the ring to those that are stronger than him and they return it to him saying that they would be more powerful, but they would also become corrupted. 

Writing in the Modern Age

Writing has changed a good deal since whenever writing started. To understand the change we must look at what came before writing. Epic poems were passed from father to son and thereby kept alive until someone decided to write it down. Writing has been around almost as long as words, going back about thirty thousand years ago Homo Sapiens were painting interpreting some unknown thought onto a wall on their cave (whether that was the number forty two is unconfirmed). If you go forward about twenty six thousand years and into a cave in the city of Uruk you would see clay being inscribed with a record of how much land some important person had. Eventually in Egypt a few of the pictures were chosen to represent a certain sound and with that invention came the ability to form words in a pictorial form. Than a bunch of other important things happened. In 1439 came the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenburg. The ability to "print" books led to people reading more books and naturally, information being passed around. Without the capability to mass produce books information could not be spread so diversely. Many important scientific works would be largely unknown, such as Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, (possibly the most important scientific book ever written) or Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Around the 18th century Lord Stanhope had constructed an industrial printing press which doubled the amount of pages per hour possible. In 1814 the first truly successful newspaper: The Times was first published. Seventy four years later John Loud was issued a patent for the ballpoint pen. The patent for the typewriter was issued in 1867, later in 1914 came the invention of the electronic typewriter. The first modern computer was invented in 1941, but the first commercially available was the Apple II in 1997. In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. The Apple iPhone was introduced in 2007. What do all these things have in common? They all have contributed to writing!

How much has writing changed changed in the last century? How many letters have you received in the last six months? How many emails have you received in the last six months? For someone under 20 it is likely that the only letters that you have received are either birthday or get well cards. How many emails have you gotten in the past six months? Very likely more than you can count. My high score for emails in a day is 70 new messages.  Have ever written an article in a newspaper? Unless you are Charlotte, probably not. Have you ever written a blog post? Depends on your age, 60% of bloggers are 18-44. How often do you post on Facebook? More than thirty five million Facebook users update their status every day! Wikipedia has more than fourteen million articles. What does all this say about writing? It says that people write more. What does it not say? About the quality of the writing. Every time I go on Facebook I see examples of people who should not be allowed access to a keyboard! I see people who can't tell the difference between a post and a message! They post little tidbits of information that we don't care about or don't want to know! As I check Facebook I see a few uninteresting posts followed by one that makes me grimace and one that makes me laugh. The friend request is not my favorite, I have a "friend" in Russia and a request from a woman in Nevada offering to go out with me and then do inappropriate things. [end rant] What do mobile phones say about writing? Instant messaging. I have seen people sit next to each other to text, I have heard of several teens in a car texting each other, and then dying. Texting, as Thomas Jefferson would have of put it a "necessary evil". We can't live with it and we can't live with it. But it is very funny when you receive a text intended for someone else.