A witty title....no...just a short rant

Today on Facebook, I got into a discussion/argument over Disney Princesses. The main arguments were about Pocahontas and Mulan.   In real life Pocahontas was not a princess but a chief’s daughter.  Some would see that as an equivalent to the European idea of Princess and when she went to England she was given the title of Princess Rebecca.   But there is a cultural difference which I won’t go into.  Mulan, in life and in Disney was not a princess.  She was not born a princess nor did she marry a prince.  But she was ‘given’ the title of “Princess,” because she was the Main characters.  There are many princess in the Disney line that do not have the TITLE of Princess for one reason or another.  Really, the topic of Disney Princesses is not a simple one to tackle.

But what bothered me most was the attitude the other person had.  He (I’m guessing…I don’t know) started to resort to insults and questioning my empathy levels among other things.  I don’t know this person so the comments are irrelevant.  When I try to explain myself or why I KNOW Mulan was not a princess, or that native Americans don’t have ‘Princesses’, its an opinion and thus somehow oppressive.   How is an opinion on Facebook oppressive?   Yes, my opinion differed because of my experience and research and the fact that I tend not to agree with Disney on how they determine who is a princess and who isn’t.   But is that oppressive? 

I will admit that I can be stubborn but I can also admit if I have changed my mind and I also know when to walk away.  Some people like this person cannot walk away unless its them who has the last word.     Some would say it’s sexist….in this case, it might be (Again, I don’t know this person at all so I can’t be completely sure.)  I am trying to look at this experience from a Cultural Studies stand point.  I am trying to be calm and rational about it, but it pisses me off.  If I am not being rude to you or insulting to you, do not feel that it is okay for you to be that way.  If after a while I go...okay, it's my opinion, you don't have to like it or agree...that is a subtle clue of walking away and ending the conversation.  Take the hint.

One of my problems with online conversations, debates, and arguments is that you are reading words but you are not hearing the other person.  By hearing, I mean you are not hearing the tone of the other person’s voice.  That’s a big thing because when you read you are imaging their tone and attitude and thus you react to that, whether it’s the other person’s intention or not.    In conversations with my friends (face to face not online) it’s something that many people do whether they realize it or not.  I’m sure that it’s something people don’t realize it, but it can strain online conversations.  

This is at least my opinion.   Sorry if you find it oppressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections of a Semester gone by....

In past post I wrote about a project I was working on at school.  Our project was to promote eating not only local grown food, promoting farmer’s markets and such.  The ideas for the project to me seemed to come to our fairly easily.  We talked about our ideas openly and what the project goal was.   We discussed our schedules and what would work best for us in the way of communications.  I would like think that working on the project went well.   Of course there were always some issues.  Sometimes people ask what would you do differently.  I had hate questions like that.  I really do.  It seems to mostly be begging for you to focus on what went wrong or was screwed up.   It forces you to focus on the negative and could have beens instead of the positives and what you have achieved.  If I had to answer that question I might have said that I wished some would have taken it more seriously.  During this process I’ve learned that the media’s that are coming out will either fade away like myspace or grow into something that is everyday.    All this was really well explained in the book “Smarter than you think” by Clive Thompson, that I had to read.  But there are pitfalls and still things being argued over like Creative Commons and Copy rights.   I did find myself refreshing my memory on coding and programming through our class exercises.

 

Smarter Than You Think Book Review

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better

· Written by: Clive Thompson (Graduate of Toronto University.  Runs Collision Detection, his blog, that I started to follow.  My favorite is the Star Wars Story Scroll and I don’t even like Star Wars.)

· Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

· Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins 

· Format: Unabridged

 

I listen to a lot of audio books, but not a lot of technology books. I don’t even read books about technology.  I usually expect them to be dull and dry.  Not the case this time and what I love about this book was that it was A) positive and B) it made sense.   The content was engaging and interesting and when you combine that with a talented narrator, it takes the book to a different level.

Starting out the author points out, that feeling apprehension and wariness of new technology is nothing new.   Dime Novels, telephone, magazines....even coffeehouses have something in common.  They had once been deem, the downfall of the human mind.

At first when he started to talk about chess and the computers, but as the book went on, I started to reflect on that more and more.  It also made so much more sense when he talked about Jeopardy playing Watson, (Another computer).

One of the things that I want to bring up is the subject of Life Loggers.  It was absolutely astonishing to me.  I had never heard of them before.   The wearable computers, the recorders, people setting up their houses to be recorded and why….It blew my mind.  I’m afraid of giving too much away, but listening and reading (I also read the kindle version when I could not listen to audio) to the way they had used technology and what it made them realize, was enlightening.  Parts of this book made me start to wonder if I was remembering things the way they were or if my organic was remembering them the way it think they should be.

One of the best statements of this book says that we will not know exactly what new technology will be for until everybody has it and it becomes common.    One of the beautiful about this is that while the author makes his case, he still allows for you to come up with your own conclusion.

On a little side note:  I love that he mentions DBSK!  One of my favorite Korean boy bands EVER!!!!

Fresh Food and Gordon Ramsay Burgr

 

Okay, I know I will probably put this up on our group blog, but It's good here too since I could not make classes this week.

I love Vegas.  I go there almost every year with my family for various reasons.  One of the things that I love about Vegas is the food.  My family and I love to try and sample different foods we would not normally eat at home.  One year we went to a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the MGM, last time we went to Bobby Flay's Messa Grill, (it was  awesome). 

This year we decided to try out one of my favorite television chef's:  Gordon Ramsay!  He has several restaurants in Vegas, including Hell's Kitchen in the Paris, several  television shows  (Kitchen Nightmares and The F Word), I even have his Nintendo DS Game: Hell's Kitchen and through the game he as on occasion called me a donkey. However in real life he has always been a advocate of fresh simple food.  He states it in all of his shows and I was so thrilled to see that he actually applies what he teaches in other restaurants to his own shows.

Gordon Ramsay's Burgr is in  Planet Hollywood. Now we actually had one burger a piece.

 My father had the Hell's Kitchen Burger because he loves hot food.   This burger had Asadero cheese ,Roasted jalopeno peppers, avocado, and oven roasted tomato.  

I love cheese so I ordered the Uber Cheese Burger.  My burger was medium rare and so juicy.  It had Fontina Cheese, Raclette Cheese, and Goat Cheese.   They blend so well together the only word I can think of is ..not even a word but a sound of happiness.  

My mother had the Southern Yardbird Burger.   This is a chicken burger with sharp cheddar, pickle, butter lettuce and mustard bbq sauce.  Now, this is very important, my mother hates chicken burgers.  She says that they are always dry, tasteless and you can taste that it has been frozen.  But this chicken burger she had was none of those things.   It was juicy.  Seriously I could see the juiciness from across the table.  She loved this burger.

The next day I tried the Euro Burger.  This burger was topped with truffle aioli, goat cheese, arugula and oven roasted tomato.   Again this was medium rare and just so good.  It was my first time having Truffle aioli.

I had asked to speak with the head chef, but that was not possible.  It's okay!  It's Vegas!  I understand.

Fresh, simple and delicious.  I wish he would open up a location in Chicago, but it was worth the trek.

This experience just reminded me why he is one of my culinary heroes.  He practices what he preaches!

(I took the pictures)

Fresh Foods Fresher lives

Our goal is to make accessing small, locally grown/made produce and products easier for people living in the Chicagoland area and surrounding suburbs. We plan to achieve this by making information about dates and times of local farmers markets more easily accessible. We currently have a Facebook page and plan to maybe get into contact with larger chain grocery stores which cater to such quality standards such as Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Plum Market and Eataly. By doing this we hope to inspire people to support their local farmers and care more about getting the highest quality produce possible.

We will also be including things such as fliers, and review on books about Organic and Fresh foods that have tips, recipes and basic consumer information.

Remix: Copyright or not

When it comes to copyrighting, there are a lot of issues that come up.    And I am on the fence about it at this moment.   I have had people, friends, who have tried to copyright my stories and creations under their name.   That is a theft that is not easily forgivable or forgettable.   I have never forgotten it and so I am actually a bit paranoid.   As a writer and an artist I feel I would actually prefer it if people came to me.  I have worked so hard on creating my characters, my stories, my world, that I would be horrified if someone took it out of the context I meant for it to be.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't understand the other side of it, so I think I would copyright a good amount of my work and specifically  come up with something that I can release for Creative Commons, that other artist can use.


My Artist Manifesto:

Protect yourself and your work

Help others and create to help them

DON'T take yourself too seriously.

 

Here's the link to some of my older art and stories including fan fiction: My Art Page

This Pitch or that?

And my writing for new media class we all have to present ideas for us to work on in groups that would create an active web space.  

 

My idea was on creating a common space using common language for cultural studies. This is an attempt for the structural lysed institution to see why so many people tend to shy away from learning about its theories and ideas. I really think my idea for a came out of the basic frustration that I feel I have with the field.   From what I see so far the academic ideals of cultural studies is just that academic ideals.  My idea was to form a webspace is kind of a cultural studies support group. 

 

Everybody from our class each gave us their own idea what do you think our project should be one of the projects that I really liked was the project for fresh and organic food by local farmers to be more accessible.  I really like that idea because when I lived in China all of our food was made fresh right there you could stand there and see them making your food you could go to the street and find fresh behind next or Lowdes much that would just brought in everything was so much fresher and it just improve the taste of food and I think that in America while it's what we say we want we still program to go to the store and buy something frozen third in the freezer and reheat it when we needed that could be why America's best countries other than the fact that we supersize everything.

The other idea that was pitched to the class was one for online book club. That is an idea that I feel like I can get behind I work in the bookstore I have for a long time I worked in libraries and I think it's time for people to become more active with the reading.

Sent from my iPhone