Author Archives: Nicole Clemons

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Advertising Gone Wrong…

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For my digital project, I decided to dub over some recent toy commercials to expose the world of advertising. I portrayed both of the toys featured as being plan and boring and unnecessary in life. Both of the toys, Test Tube Aliens and the revamped Furby have no point to their creation and do not benefit children in any way. Their advertisements persuade people to go and buy them by showing the excitement children have while playing with them and the fun tricks they can do but in a digital age, nobody wants to watch some weird alien thing grow or play with a creepy Furby.

Advertising Gone Wrong

 

 

Professor Kaufman comes up with good ideas!

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Even though I really wanted to make a 3D object, I think I’ll just steal professor Kaufman’s idea and dub over a television commercial like this one: The WTF Blanket (Snuggie Parody) I must admit, I do own a Snuggie (it was a gift) but my dubbed commercial idea won’t be to ridicule some weird medicinal commercial or children’s toy. When I figure how to work iMovie, it will be to expose the hidden “subliminal” messages of the ad.

Since I am hoping to focus my project on commercial advertising and their influence on society (without using the word society), dubbing over a commercial would be the best choice. I’m not sure what 3D model I would be able to make instead of doing a video. I could make a model of a television but that’s too plain, and it would take too long to make a model of a family being brainwashed by their television.

So, going with Kaufman’s idea, I’ll just find a really funny commercial geared to either young, maleable children, or elderly people with a ton of problems. SO… let me know what you think while you enjoy these inspirational videos!!!

Mighty Putty and Sticky Buddy

Etgar Keret, amusingly dark.

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So, I wasn’t expecting much from Colm Toibin or Etgar Keret but Keret was definitely the winner in the battle of the foreign writers. Before I get into the awesomeness of Keret, I must say Toibin, through his understandable Irish accent, did attempt to make his speech interesting with various stories pertaining to his book Brooklyn. We can’t really complain though, most of the class did not enjoy reading Brooklyn so hearing the story behind the work of creative non-fiction wasn’t going to be a jaw dropper.

It turns out, for those who missed the speech or simply wasn’t paying attention, Brooklyn is a semi-true story. The plot of a young woman moving to America, leaving her sister and mother behind in Ireland is true. The young Irish transplant had worked in a department store in Brooklyn, lived in a boarding house and married a(n Irish not Italian) man  in America without telling her family.

To compose the tale, Toibin revealed that he did do extensive research, traveling to areas in Brooklyn where Irish immigrants lived in the early 20th century but he didn’t bother to take any detailed notes. “Anything that is important, I would remember.”

Worn out by Toibin, I hoped that Keret would be a bit amusing despite his thick, yet intriguing accent, and he certainly was. His introduction of where he’s from, his life and family got the crowd to giggle, something that rarely occurred during the Toibin talk. His readings from Suddenly, a Knock on the Door were captivating, even for a class who hasn’t studied his work. Even his short film “What About Me,” with a talking donkey and dog had interest.

I am having a hard time relating his talk “The Real and the Imagined…” to bioethics and our upcoming research paper. Keret mostly talked about the origins of the two stories he read, like the story of a German newscaster prompting him to pretend to write a story for television and the story of how he met up with the wrong person at a cafe. Maybe his talks were suppose to inspire us; that any topic can be formed into a good story if we relate it to a real life situation. We should focus our research topics on things that affect us or interest us, just like how Keret wrote two amazing short fiction stories based on non fiction situations, the real and the imagined.

Sympathy for David Reimer…

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I’ve studied the Reimer case before in my high school psychology class and i’m super excited to dive into it again. After reading some of As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised a Girl, I’ve realized that it has an uncanny resemblance to the structure of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. John Colapinto takes the same route as Rebecca Skloot did. In his preface, he clarifies that the work is a true non-fiction account. He also recalls his story of how he was able to contact David Reimer and the lengths he went through to convince Reimer to expose his true identity and the identity of his family to the world. He also includes details of how great of challenge it is for Reimer to recall events from his stage as Brenda Reimer, similar to the situation with Skloot and the character Deborah Lacks and the rest of her zany family.

Getting into the story, Colapinto provides a back story to the Reimer case and structures his book like Skloot had. He shows the relationship between the parents Ron and Janet (similarly to Henrietta and David), the event that changed everything, the botched circumcision (similarly to the taking of cancer cells), and the involvement of Dr. Money (similarly to Dr. Gey). When I read the involvement of John Hopkins Hospital in the Reimer case, I wasn’t shocked. But, I can tell you I will never, ever go to that hospital if my life depended on it.

I’m super excited to hear David’s part of the famed case. In psychology, you never really get a chance to hear the patients perspective in the case because you’re dealing with scientist and a majority of the patients are always anonymous. Even though I greatly enjoyed the Henrietta Lacks, I think I’ll enjoy this one more because I have a greater interest in it.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!

I found the BBC Documentary on David Reimer’s case on Youtube so check it out so you can put a face and voice to the name if my featured picture doesn’t do it for you 🙂

Dr. Money and the Boy With No Penis

Round 2…

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Here it is! Paper two; and with it, sleepless nights, brain farts, and panic. Already, I’m having trouble choosing a topic. I try to go with a topic I can write the most on but right now, I don’t have a solid idea on what I could write.I’m stuck between choice one and three, leaning more towards choice one but I just feel stuck. True, I really don’t feel like writing a paper, I doubt that anyone does, but we have to suck it up. We’re in college now and we have to do what we’re told, or not, it’s our decision but this time we’re literally paying for our mistakes. I think it’s just that this time of year that’s etting to me. We use to have a break every week and now it’s just straight classes everyday until Thanksgiving. Then, the holiday season starts and the semester is ending.

We’re in the part of the year that if there was a movie about kids in school, they would skip over this part. For example, The movie based on the terrific book, Speak the beginning of it is the end of summer, beginning of school, then Thanksgiving jumps right in there. No mention of October. I think I feel this way because of Halloween. I used to look forward to Halloween but now we’re deemed too old for all the tricks and treats. This gif proves my pont –> –> Halloween is for Kids <– <– Before I get in trouble for writing off topic, let’s get back to paper 2. I guess I just need guidance. I need someone to go over my outline and say,”Yea,  you can write about that.” Or even give me ideas to add to my paper before handing in the first draft like in high school. I don’t want to waste my time and energy writing a 5-7 page paper that is going to be shot down because it’s idea isn’t strong. But there’s nothing wrong with trying. I think I just need to think harder or do what Prof. Kaufman says to do, don’t stop writing.

There’s a building under there…

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Baruch’s futuristic architecture is now on full display.

Is anyone else super excited that the scaffolding in front of the Vertical Campus is down? The building looks amazing now, and really chic. I remember I visited Baruch for a journalism conference about two years ago and the scaffolding wasn’t up yet but I could never remember what the building actually looked like. I’m glad that we get to go to school without the scaffolding now, there’s places to sit and at night, you can really see the steps light up.

I must admit, when I made the decision to go to Baruch, I was really upset because it wasn’t an actual campus. I wanted to get the full college experience and live in the dorms. I decided to go the cheaper route, go to Baruch and commute everyday. You can argue that now I won’t be in debt when I graduate but I still wasn’t convinced. Not until after the first month of school did I finally say, “Hey, I really like it here.” The VC building is amazing. It’s all high tech and very modern. Compared to other schools, Baruch is really stylish. Well, the VC building is stylish. I’m sure after the planned reconstruction of the 17 Lex. Building is done, it will look equally stylish. Plus, the college is fighting the DOT to get E. 25th Street closed. They want to make it into a pedestrian plaza like at Times Square and in front of the Flatiron Building down the street. I did a story on it in the latest edition of The Ticker for Features so check it out! 🙂

Now, we all know that it took Baruch a while to get the escalators to start working but it seems that they’ve fixed the problem. EXCEPT for the first up escalator in the VC. It’s been broken all week! That’s like the most important escalator in the building! it get’s you to the second floor where you can either take the elevators or the next set of escalators. Nobody wants to walk up all those steps as soon as they enter the building. Call me lazy but that needs to be fixed.

Another thing is that one of the elevators has not been in service since school began. If i remember correctly, there are about 5 elevators to choose from and with one not working, that only leaves 4 working elevators. And what gets on my nerves is that the elevators stop on the fifth floor! WHY? The working escalators go up to the sixth floor! Students could just take the escalators to the fifth floor. One day, I was late to history and missed the daily quiz because none of the elevators came for about 5 minutes. I had to walk up the stairs all the way to the ninth floor. I nearly died! I never want to do that ever again. And forget about the elevators in 17 Lex. Sometimes they’re crowded and sometimes their empty. Sometimes they stop at every floor sometimes they don’t.

But enough complaining. It’s only October and we’re only freshman. There’s much more to come.

 

Dr. Jekyll is real…

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I always thought that doctor’s are suppose to aim to help their patients. Does the Hippocratic Oath mean nothing anymore? Dr. Gey in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is insane. It was said in class the other day that doctors should be dedicated with their work but they shouldn’t be obsessed. I believe Dr. Gey is obsessed and he would go to any length to get his work done. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed someone just to harvest their cells. When we started talking about Dr. Gey in class, the story of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came into my mind.

I also thought of a documentary I watched back in high school. I took psychology and we did a study on mental patients and their treatment in mental institutions. One of the treatments were lobotomies which consiste of the cutting of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex for the treatment of different mental institutions. Known as the top lobotomist of his time, Dr. Walter Freeman perfected the art of performing lobotomies to cure the mentally ill. In his process, he drove ice picks into patients eye sockets to destroy the connections of the prefrontal lobe. Claimed to have performed over 3,000 lobotomies before they were deemed inhumane, Freeman died in 1972. The following link is a trailer to the documentary I watched: The Lobotomist.

Forgiveness for the 1st Draft…

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What did I just read??? I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone the entire time. Forgiveness by Rebecca Brown is a really interesting short story and I’m glad I had the chance to read it. I must admit, it was a very painful to make a case study out of it. Creativity is not my forte. As a journalist, I’m more of a facts and information type person. All throughout high school in my English classes, we wrote persuasive and informative essays, never creatively. I like to say that high school killed our creativity.

I had a lot of trouble creating a thesis for my essay about Forgiveness. Even when I had an idea of where I wanted to go with the essay, I lost it from over thinking. I’m not excited about this essay but I’m content with it for now. I just wish I had a stronger thesis and point of view on the idea. I’m hoping after several edits I can perfect the paper and make it stronger. Who’s Gonna Save My Soul by Gnarls Barkley is a video that reminded me of Forgiveness by Rebecca Brown. It has a similar theme to the short story and I wanted to share it so check out the link  and let me know what you think. (Even if you didn’t read Forgiveness)

The Heart of the Matter

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Wow. Transplanting the hearts of endangered chimpanzees for the benefits of humans is crazy. I was very confused by this last passage. Are the animals already deceased or are they killing the chimps in the name of the well being of humans. Im kind of torn with this subject of organ transplants and the protection of animals. I love all animals and I’m a very strong believer of not using animals for science and other things that will harm them. But I strongly believe in transplants and promoting organ donations. My dad received a kidney transplant this past April and has been getting better ever since, we have been waiting for about six years for him to get a kidney.

When it comes to this, I like to think of who is going to benefit more. The chimpanzee (who it is not discussed if they are dying or going to be killed) or the human who has a family to take care of. If people are purposely killing the chimps to take their organs for humans, then 1: that is the most disgusting thing i have ever heard of and 2: you better have a plan B. Besides, doesn’t the heart have to be immediately removed from the body after death? So that might mean they are murdering chimps for the well-being of humans. Humans are apart of the animal kingdom and I do believe in the Theory of Social Darwinism by Charles Darwin but this passage needs to be more clear. How are they collecting the organs???

Bioethics and it’s importance….

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“A field of study concerned with the ethics and philosophical implications of certain biological and medical procedures, technologies, and treatments…” This dictionary definition of bioethics has helped me to understand what is being discussed in class, the ethical concern of the advancements in biology and medicine has been the topic of many heated debates over the past few years and until now, I had no clue what was being said. Discussions on stem-cell research and cloning are a few generic topics discussed when mentioning the idea of bioethics. The main focus is whether these practices are right or wrong. Where do we as humans of the 21st century draw the line? There are many things that persuade a person to think something is right or wrong like religious preference and morality. But when these practices, take stem-cell research for instance, can save lives, is there a general right or a general wrong?

The Declaration made by UNESCO addresses the ethical issues “related to medicine, life sciences and associated technologies as applied to human beings, taking into account their social, legal and enviornmental dimensions.” UNESCO suggests to “provide a universal framework of principles and procedures,” “guide the actions of individuals, groups, communities…etc,” “promote respect for human dignity and protect human right,” and “recognize the importance of freedom of scientific research and the benefits derived from scientific and technological developments…” My question is, how can we make a “universal framework of principles” if we all have different beliefs, some centered around strong bonds to religion? In America, we have freedom of religion and speech and if we have a “universal framework of principles” then our freedoms are being taken away.

Since this is a nation of ‘freedom’, everyone has their own preferences, beliefs and ideas. We can, but we should not judge others on what they believe or prefer. The first amendment protects our freedom of speech and freedom of religion and if ones religion is against the topics that are brought up when discussing bioethics, we should not judge them for their religious opinions. It defeats the aspect of freedom.