A letter to Margaret

Dearest Margaret,
     You flatter me with all your kind words while touching on a very important topic. Much has changed from the days with Elvis and Marlon Brando. Gone are the days of unwavering patriotism and optimism. Looking back at my comparatively short history, there has never been this much doubt about me as we are seeing today. Even some of my own citizens are ashamed and appalled at what is done in my name. My people have lost pride in me and I cannot wholly blame them.
     I have been increasingly dependent on everyone but myself for the products found in daily life. No longer are people proud when they see “Made in USA.” The American soldiers abroad have not been the shining examples that we once thought they were. I feel like we treat everyone else with disdain and condescension. This is not the America that everyone called the land of opportunity. How horrible it must be to come here and realize that I am not the shining example I was made out to be. Perhaps this is where the disappointment and contempt started, when people first found out that they were lied to about all that I supposedly promised.
     All the while the citizenry go about their daily routines with this disappointment about them and it spreads to all parts of their lives. Then along came the people who try and divert our attention from the important issues so that the people may forget their disappointment in their country and instead be disappointed about the latest American Idol reject. Is this really what we want our American idol to be? Someone who leads us astray from what needs to be done so that the few with power may do as they please while we are distracted by our “American” idol?
     There is much that is to be desired about me, but I still have hope that one day I may live up to your expectations about me. I still believe in the image that has been painted of me and I know that there will come a time that others will think of me and see that image as well.
Thank you again for your kind words and concern,
      -America

Horse Blinders

It is both amazing and frightening how single minded these people are towards football. On one hand it is so nice to see such devotion. It is rare to see people today so devoted to a single thing. On the other hand being devoted to football seems like such a ridiculous thing to be devoted to. Maybe it is because I never got the point of watching sports. I did not see the point in watching others play sports. When I did have to watch sports I did get involved in the game, but I never reached the level of fanaticism that these people in the article have. I always thought about how sports drew the attention of all the fans away from more pressing issues, be it campus budgets or world issues. It seems that there is always some sport season starting when one ends so that there is never really time for a sports fan to take a break and look away from the world of sports. This article does a good job showing how the people of USF want so bad to be like the other top football schools, and how absurd it is because of the staggering amount of money needed to keep the program going and how the school justifies taking money away from the school’s general budget for football when football already has an enormous budget. I would have liked to see the impact this has on the rest of the school. Are they struggling with lacking science facilities? Are the computer labs outdated? Are there repairs being neglected so that these people can live vicariously through the football players?

Ads and school

Somehow our society has come to be jaded by all the ads that are shown everywhere. Ask a some students if they are having a hard time memorizing some notes for a class and you will probably get an earful about how it sucks to memorize all the stuff. Then ask them what the catchphrase or latest commercial is for a product and they probably would know it right off the bat. Croissant makes a good point about the growth that a student does during college, “Students are developing their identities, and that includes brand and lifestyle identities as well as the disciplinary and occupational identities that are the focus of faculty work. (82)” This means that the companies want students to be able to access their product easily so they may build a loyalty to that brand. Companies want to have the students have fond memories associated with their product. Unfortunately because these companies are not actually interested in helping the university, even though it may seem that way, greed seems to play a large role in what is advertized on campus. There seem to be monopolies forming in advertizing in universities because to have two different soda brands advertizing would be a conflict of interest. But whose interest? Certainly not the students who probably prefer a certain brand of soda, but are not strictly dedicated to one or the other. All of the advertisements that we see give us the right to make a decision about who gets our money. If we are only able to see one option on campus, then there really isn’t a choice for us.

This episode of Clone High is about how a corporate sponsor influences a school election. A highlight is at 5:20 to 5:56.

The future da Vinci

Just the other day I was wondering why there was no person comparable to da Vinci living today. It cannot be that there is nothing left to be discovered or invented. Then I got to thinking that the way that da Vinci learned was totally different from our school structure today. Within our school system we have requirements that have to be fulfilled in order to pass. While it is like a safeguard to make sure that people have the correct knowledge to continue their education, it makes for students who dread going to school. This dread of classes makes it so the student does not like going to class and does only the minimum to get by. After the student is done with their required learning they have formed a habit to do the bare minimum to get by. This is part of the reason that we do not have a da Vinci of our time, people rarely go out into the world and learn about everything they can. They have this notion in their head that learning is dreadful and certainly cannot be enjoyable. Granted in da Vinci’s time there was a lot left to discover about what we today consider common knowledge. Perhaps for there to be a da Vinci of our time, this person has to be well versed in the most complex knowledge in many different areas, but who would want to take the time to learn all that?

Newman presents a good point when he says that if all learning was together, there would be people all around that we could learn from from all different interests. This would help us be more well rounded so that we can have a better grasp on all aspects of life rather than a narrow specialty.