Here it is, the PowerPoint portion of my Digital Project. Steven Blumenthal Digital Project Powerpoint (link for download– our WordPress doesn’t let you display the PowerPoint on the blog itself, but any one who clicks that link can download my PowerPoint).

Here is an online video version of the slides, though the transitions and animations don’t seem to carry over from the PowerPoint: Steven Blumenthal YouTube Digital Project

For some reason the YouTube video above also is just displaying as a link to YouTube. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the blog (like if they don’t want people embedding videos onto these sites), but if anyone knows how to insert a YouTube video into a post on Blogs at Baruch please let me know.

For my research paper I plan to be doing something relating to media bias. In particular, how today’s 24/7 media culture effects and influences our views on issues. To do this effectively I plan on comparing and contrasting cable networks like Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as well as discussing how the involved parties now have greater control of their own messages thanks to sites like Twitter (as the Obama and Romney campaigns did during the most recent Presidential election and Israel and Hamas in the most recent Gaza conflict).

For the digital part of this project I’m torn between doing a video or a 3D object. For the video side I’m leaning toward a “mashup” of clips featuring of Fox and MSNBC on an issue, mixed in with some commentary from a third source like the Colbert Report and The Daily Show. I also may have clips of online text articles in the clip to show the “truth side.”

As I am not a skilled video editor, and the fact that I am not so sure I have the proper computer and tools to undertake such an ambitious project (I have a Windows PC which is great at a lot of things but not as good as the Mac for video editing), I am also considering doing a 3D print out of a microphone. On the back of this mic would be the logos of MSNBC, Fox and CNN, with the word “TRUTH” on the front. The top of the mic (the big circular area) would be something like a globe, to symbolize that this is a global issue. I would accompany this with a PowerPoint explaining how I created this and why (possibly with some clips interspersed as well).

Still unsure which direction I will go in, but this is where my head is right now.

Since I was having trouble thinking about what to write for this blog post I decided to Google some of Charles Bernstein poems. I couldn’t think of anything else so why not right? After looking up a few of his works Its pretty amazing to me how his writing of poetry completely goes against any ideas of what I thought poetry was. Some have no rhyming or “flow” and are more like short stories with really short sentences (like “Dear Mr. Fanelli”).

One poem that caught my eye was “Questionnaire” (you can see it here). It’s very similar to something we did in class a few weeks back (I don’t remember that exercise fully, I just remember us reading lines, so they may actually be the same), but again, you would never think of this as a poem. I mean, if answering a questionnaire is considered poetry then I read poetry every time I go to the dentist. Of course those questionnaires aren’t poetry, yet somehow this is. This got me to thinking why.

After answering the questions posed and thinking for a few minutes “what in the world is this” it dawned on me why this might be poetry. The goal of this is to make us think, something I found to be expressed in the very last question: “14.a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perception of reality.  b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only consciousness and not events.”

That is what I think Charles Bernstein is trying to say. That there is no definition of art. Art, and poetry is a form of art, can be anything, something that changes our lives or how we live them. It gets us to think about how we see the world and what we really want.

Of course, I may be completely crazy here and completely off base and all he did was write a simple questionnaire. Any thoughts?

Writing this paper I feel lost. Where as in the first paper I felt proud of what I was writing, at this point I’m a mixture of tired, confused, and a bit angry. I don’t know why but I just can’t seem to get anything going.

I have somehow gotten 4 pages, but I’m not sure how good those 4 pages are. It’s really frustrating but hopefully with some peer review my paper can turn into something good.

Watching SportsCenter and reading things like the New York Post you’d think the Yankees were already swept. You’d think that the New York baseball season was officially over. Well, I don’t think so. I think in a season of crazy and unbelievable things there is a little more crazy still to come.

We just had a baseball season where truly amazing things happened. A season where everything wasn’t as it was “supposed to go.” The Red Sox and Phillies were two teams many expected to be playing in the World Series next week. Both are currently sitting at home after awful seasons, so awful that both traded away big players in the middle of the year (Hunter Pence from the Phillies, Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett from the Sox) and the Red Sox fired their manager, Bobby Valentine, after only one season.

This was a year where teams that spent little money in the off-season (Orioles, A’s) had dream seasons, while teams that spent fortunes (Angles, Marlins) had nightmares. We’ve seen players many considered to be washed up, such as 37 year old knuckleballer R.A. Dickey of the Mets, turn back time with remarkable, Cy Young-worthy performances. Heck, Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers gave baseball it’s first Triple Crown winner (where one player leads the league in homeruns, batting average and RBIs for the season) in 45 years. Heck even the Mets were considered a possible playoff team at the All Star break.

So in a season of the seemingly impossible, whose to say that the Yankees can’t do to the Tigers what the Red Sox did to them at this same time 8 years ago. Both teams were in 0-3 holes, both had big players struggling (Johnny Damon of the Red Sox was in a 1-13 slump through the first three games of the 2004 ALCS with 5 strikeouts, and of course it’s well known how A-Rod and the Yankees lineup as a whole is struggling today), and both had their local media and fans saying their season was over.

In a crazy baseball season why can’t one think that it will get a bit crazier. As Yogi Berra, the Hall Of Fame Yankee catcher once said: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

I agree with Lukas, this book is turning out to be much more interesting than I anticipated. After reading Brooklyn over the summer, I’m not gonna lie, I was very much not looking forward to reading this book. But after the salesperson in my local Barnes and Noble spoke about this book with such excitement and after reading some of the review excerpts on the flaps of the book, I must say, this is one very good book.

Now I’ve only read about 70 pages, but every time I pick it up I keep reading much more than I anticipated. Her life story in the early parts of the first chapter to me read like a movie. In my mind I could easily envision how this would play out on the silver screen. And now with seeing how her doctors treated her, and how her family wasn’t compensated for all the advances in medicine literally taken from Ms. Lacks’ cells shocks me. This isn’t some work of fiction, this is something that actually happened in real life.

Anyways, I’m actually excited to see what happens next.

After reading Rebecca Browns “Forgiveness” I wasn’t sure how to approach my paper. I was very uncertain and honestly took a shot in the dark. Thankfully though, thanks to some guidance from Kimberlyn and James as well as Professor Kaufman, I feel like I’m close to an actually decent paper.

It’s still not perfect and I have some more work to do on it prior to submitting it, but I at least feel like I have a direction to go with it. I’m actually now looking forward to finish up this assignment and seeing what my final paper will look like.

Taking a life, whether human or ape, is a hard thing to do. Hell, it is probably the hardest thing to do, as seen by all of our troops coming home all messed up from what goes on in war. Killing, particularly killing something with such strong human qualities and characteristics, changes a person. As the old saying goes, you lose a bit of yourself. It is why after reading some of the other posts on this topic that its easy to see why we all have such varying opinions on this topic.

On the other hand, there is no better feeling in the world than helping someone. Particularly when you know that you have actually saved that person’s life. That is why I am in support of using chimpanzee hearts for human medical transplant.  I am of the opinion that helping to save a human life is one of the most important things one can do.

That being said I also believe that we shouldn’t make a species extinct to do so. We should only pursue this path if there are enough preliminary data to say that this will work. With a species like Chimpanzees on the cusp of extinction as is there is no room for starting the experiments here. If however we do know that it will work, than I am all for it.