Now and Then

I interviewed Marsia Weeks who was my age in 1995. I put my findings in Voicethread, which you can view by clicking here.

We're All Doomed! 2: The Barbie Effect

I did the second part of this assignment on Cherice's opinion piece, "The Barbie Effect". The writer is writing an opinion but states a lot of the information as facts. I questioned if she had done her research which is why I selected this article. She got some of it right, but some of it wrong. Below is a breakdown of some of the main "facts":
Barbie Statistics:
- 6’ tall, 100 lbs., size 39-19-33.
According to the South Shore Eating Disorder Collaborative, who built the first ever “Real-Life Barbie”, she would be 5’9”, weigh 110 lbs. and measure 39-18-33.
- Average girl from age 3 – 11 owns at least 10 Barbie dolls and spends hours playing with them and dressing them up.
The information I found indicated Barbie’s are most commonly owned by girls 4 – 12 and that they will own an average of 7 in that time.
- In 1965, Slumber Party Barbie debuted with a scale set at 110 lbs, a book titled “How to Lose Weight” with the contents of “Don’t eat”, caused sales of Barbie to drop dramatically.
According to the New York Times, sales of Barbie began dropping in the early 1960’s and stayed low through the 1990’s. This Slumber Party Barbie was only part of the problem.

Eating Disorder Statistics:
- 8 million Americans have an eating disorder.
From the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that up to 24 million Americans have an eating disorder.
- 10 – 15% of them are men.
Also from the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
- 80% of females are under the age of 20.
I could not find this exact statistic, but according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 90% are women between the ages of 12 and 25.
- Admitted they started worrying about their weight between the ages of 4 and 6.
I could not find this statistic, but according to the National Eating Disorders Association 42% of girls in first through third grade want to be thinner.
- Admitted Barbie played a huge role on their influence of behavior and looks.
I could only find one study done on a direct effect between Barbie and body image. The study results showed that young girls between the ages of 5 - 8 had lower body esteem after viewing pics of Barbies than girls who viewed pics of an Emme doll (size 16) and those who viewed no dolls.

People Want to “Be Like Barbie”:
- Have spent millions of dollars making their home like the Barbie dreamhouse.
I couldn’t find any stories on Google of people who had spent any money on a “real-life” version of the Dreamhouse but there is an architect in CA who was hired by Mattel to make the Barbie Dreamhouse, and it’s in Malibu. There are also hotels and spas around the world that have Barbie themed rooms.
- Sarah Burge spent over one million dollars to achieve the Barbie look.
Wikipedia states Sarah spent over 250,000 pounds, although some of it was to correct disfigurement after a vicious attack by an ex-boyfriend. According to the Mirror, a British magazine, Sarah hasn't paid for most of the surgeries.
I was really glad I did the research because, like I said before, I questioned whether or not the author's stated facts could be backed up with hard data. Her statistics involving numbers did come from somewhere, although they were in fact low but a lot of her statements about meaning and motivation couldn't be corroborated. This exercise has led me to a) be more careful about what I believe when reading opinion pieces and b) wish that the author had cited the resources she used to come up with this information.

Find Your Tweeps

For my next homework assignment for Humanities 101, I needed to find two experts in a field I am interested in and follow them on Twitter. I am interested in a lot of different things so I was having a hard time narrowing down what to search for. But then I decided to use the class as a starting point and that led me to think of Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo is the psychologist who gave the TED talk, “The Demise of Guys?” and co-wrote a book by the same name. I am interested in following Zimbardo (@PhilZimbardo) because the information he shared in his talk really spoke to me. I believe he put a lot of thought into his ideas and did quite a bit of research, as well. For another assignment, I looked into Zimbardo’s research and I found most of it came from extremely reputable sources. Zimbardo himself could be thought of as a highly reputable source. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, has been the President of the Western Psychological Association and President of the American Psychological Association. He also has taught at Yale, Columbia, and NYU, has received many awards, and hosted a television show on PBS titled “Discovering Psychology”.

The second expert I decided to follow isn’t an expert; it’s a team of them. Ars Technica (@arstechnica) is a technology magazine started in 1998. In 2001 it became the first magazine to offer a digital subscription and was also the first to become available in digital forms and as an eBook. The thing that really stood out to me about Ars is that they aren’t “just” about technology. The name Ars Technica, Latin-derived, means art in technology. They are about “…news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice on topics ranging from the most fundamental aspects of technology to the many ways technology is helping us discover our world.” This isn’t something I would have found interesting before this class, but now that we have been introduced to Web2.0 and have been learning about all the different ways technology is redefining popular culture, I want to know more.

We're All Doomed!: Video Games and Porn

For my Humanities class assignment We’re All Doomed! I watched the TED Talks video Philip Zimbardo: The Demise of Guys? at http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html. Zimbardo’s thesis is that guys are failing academically and in forming relationships with women and video games and porn are almost certainly the cause. Zimbardo offers a wealth of supporting evidence, as follows. 1) Boys are 30% more likely to drop out of school. 2) Girls are now outperforming boys at all levels from elementary school to graduate school. 3) Boys are less likely to get BA’s (44% vs. 56%) and graduate degrees (45% vs. 55%. 4) Boys make up 2/3 of special ed. students. 5) Boys are 5 times more likely to be diagnosed ADHD. 6) Jane McGonigal: by the age of 21, boys spend 10,000 hours gaming, 2/3 of that in isolation. 7) Cindy Gallop: guys don’t know the difference between making love and doing porn. 8) Average boy watches 50 porn clips a week. 9) Porn industry is the fastest growing industry in America. 10) For every 400 Hollywood movies made, 11,000 porn movies are made. While researching the supporting evidence, I got lucky. I found the website, http://www.demiseofguys.com/resources/, which lists all the resources Zimbardo used to come up with the above evidence. If a specific web site wasn’t listed, I simply used google.com to search the keywords. The statistics on education (#1 – 5) come from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Zimbardo actually cited this web site, http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/school.html, but THEY got their info from the NCES. Jane McGonigal’s data (#6) came from her web site janemcgonigal.com. She has a research page at http://janemcgonigal.com/learn-me/. Cindy Gallop (#7) presented a talk at a 2009 TED conference. View the video here: http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/. For more, visit her web site, makelovenotporn.com. The porn statistics (#8 – 10) are from http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html. I appreciated that not only did Zimbardo do his research, but he made it easy for others to find the same information. There were many other web sites and papers cited, all that provided some evidence that Zimbardo’s concerns are valid. The sources of most of the statistics were reputable organizations, like the National Center for Education Statistics, or experts within their fields, like Jane McGonigal. What I found most interesting about this exercise was that Zimbardo used some resources and/or experts who didn’t agree with his thesis but that still provided data that he was able to use to support his belief. For example, Jane McGonigal is a game developer who believes that video games can and are changing the world… for the better. But Zimbardo found that her information on boys playing video games in isolation fed into his thesis. His use of the research this way was fascinating and helped me look at how I do research in a different light.

Sympathy and the Problem With Power

My class is reading the book "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer. The author discusses the different ways our brains work and how those parts of our brain affect our decisions, both large and small. In Chapter 6, The Moral Mind, Lehrer speaks about morality and how it is basically the structure of our brain that helps us make moral decisions. On page 187 Lehrer discusses a built-in problem with sympathy: "Once people become socially isolated, they stop simulating the feelings of other people." This sentence literally stopped me in my tracks. I was stunned by the implications of this simple statement and decided I wanted to know more. Lehrer cites a paper written by UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner in which Keltner discusses how people come into power and how that power then changes them. I read Keltner's paper, titled "The Power Paradox" and found it extremely interesting. Keltner speaks about the positive attributes one must have to take power, things like being able to pick up on the feelings and needs of others, and having social intelligence. The more a person has these positive traits the more likely they are to be put into a position of power. The real problem with power occurs not in gaining power but after having been granted power. Once these people who previously displayed strong levels of sympathizing with others and reconciling conflicts gain power, they seem to lose their ability to do those very things that boosted them into power to begin with. People in positions of power begin to act selfishly, rashly, and without concern for what their subordinates think about their decisions. In some cases this behavior can make for effective leadership, such as being willing to take risks that are necessary to continue to move a business forward. But overall, these traits make them more likely to experience a fall. They tend to end up making poor moral decisions (how many sex scandals do we see in Congress and the White House every year?) and being disliked by the very people who gave them their power to begin with. Keltner believes if we want effective leadership we have to rethink how we view power, how we treat people once they have power, and what behavior we are willing to accept from them. If everyone read this article, I believe we could have a revolution in our thinking. If we stop accepting the bad behavior of the people we grant power to, we could see a completely new way of leading emerge. And if we actually had people in power that we could look up to and respect? The way our country selects leaders and the expectations of those leaders would be dramatically different.

Alien Tour - Sculpture Garden

I will be missing class on Wednesday, June 20th (because it's my birthday) and so I am completing the in-class assignment on my own. The assignment was to give an alien a tour of a certain part of campus and explain to them the purpose of it. I chose to tour the sculpture garden. Our Q&A after the tour went as follows: Me) This is the sculpture garden. It is where we go to see beautiful things. Alien) Why? Me) Many people take pleasure in looking at beautiful things...both nature and what we call art. Alien) Why? Me) Well, we live in a tough world where there's stress and pain and suffering and looking at nature and art can help us relax and feel better. Alien) Why? Me) There is something inherently peaceful about nature and certain types of art. That peace can be gained sometimes just by being around it. Alien) Why? Me) That's hard to say. I think it's because we have removed ourselves from nature and art by surrounding ourselves with technology which is usually far from peaceful. So returning to nature, which is where we used to live, we are returning to a simpler, quieter world. It is clear by reviewing the above dialogue that I hold certain assumptions about sculpture gardens, and nature and art in general. First, I hold the belief that people enjoy sculpture gardens for their beauty and peacefulness. Our sculpture garden on campus supports this belief in a few different ways. First of all, in addition to sculpture there are loads of trees and a variety of flowers. This tells me that people enjoy the nature as much as the sculptures. Secondly, there are benches and seating scattered throughout the garden... and not just in front of the sculptures. It is clear that the intent is for people to sit and stay for awhile. Lastly, the sculpture garden is in a part of campus away from the main traffic areas. It is tucked in behind the performing arts center which isn't used on a daily basis. This tells me that part of the point is for the garden to be quiet and peaceful. The other assumption I made is that people find art intangibly valuable. The school took the time and money to build the garden, and several donors gave their time and money to support it. I doubt the school would have bothered if they didn't believe that people would appreciate having the garden there. And they wouldn't have been able to find people to support the cause if those people didn't also believe that people would use the garden and appreciate it being there. Overall, these assumptions colored everything I said to the alien and perhaps made it impossible for me to clearly explain the why's and how's of a sculpture garden because the alien didn't share my worldview.

Podcasting

I created a podcast using cinch.fm. It's not interesting...I didn't do it for the pop culture tour, just as an introduction to the techonology. But here is a link for my instructor to have a listen.

My Pop Culture Tour

I completed my pop culture tour in Voicethread, so it's like a Powerpoint presentation. I discuss books, music, and smart phones. If you would like to take a look here's the link: http://voicethread.com/share/3195010.

YouTube

Okay, I will admit to using YouTube. I have watched videos of stupid cats, funny looking dogs, and ridiculous children. I have watched clips from TV shows I missed and I have seen favorite musicians perform. With that said, I do not get the millions of people who upload videos of themselves talking to a webcam. Or singing to a webcam. Or doing stupid things in front of a webcam. Aren't we already narcissistic enough without having yet another way of thinking it's all about us? But I wanted the 5 xp so I made a YouTube video; I have to tell you, I felt like a total idiot doing it. And I really can't see myself doing it again unless forced at gunpoint. So I've decided I'm not even going to post the link here. I really hope the video dies a quick death and goes straight to YouTube hell.

Toondoo

Toondoo.com is a web site that allows you to make comic strips. It's really easy to use; you pretty much just drag and drop. Or you can import photos and have them "tooned". I made a simply comic just to practice using the site. Here's a link: www.toondoo.com/cartoon/5063545

Glogster.com

Glogster.com is a web site that allows you to make interactive posters using video, audio, web links, pictures and more to tell a story about whatever you are interested in. I made my first poster about bipolar disorder. Here's a link if you want to take a look: http://tabbycatt.edu.glogster.com/bipolardisorder/.

Gamifying Education

So I watched this video on the gamification of education (here's a link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education). It was really interesting although meant for teachers who are trying to come up with new ways to motivate students to learn. Basically, the video encourages teachers to incorporate gaming principles into their classrooms to encourage students to look at learning in a new way following three gaming principles: grading, sense of agency, and external motivators. This video made a lot of sense to me. I can see how traditional classrooms and learning have let students down. Gaming seems to work as you can get kids to sit for hours in front of a game and they just keep trying until they succeed. By gamifying education you are incorporating the principles that make it possible for kids to do this, except now they are spending hours gaining knowledge and they enjoy learning. The points-based grading is exciting. I am already thinking about all the things I need to do to earn an A instead of the minimum needed to get a C. And requiring quests to be completed before you can move on to the next badge is going to ensure I don't start slacking and skipping assignments, as I am wont to do. Overall I think this is a great idea and I am looking forward to how it plays out in this class.

Voicethread

So I tried out a new technology called Voicethread. It allows you to make presentations, similar to Powerpoint but I found it even easier to use. Plus you can use web sites, pics, or videos at the click of a button. You can then add video, spoken, or text commentary to each "slide". I don't have a camera or microphone hooked up to my computer yet but I still made a brief presentation using text commentary. To take a look click on this link:  http://voicethread.com/share/3163935/. Hope you like this brief intro to me!

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Let's talk about me and Twitter. I know a little about Twitter. I know it's popular with celebrities, and that they (celebrities) are always either a) saying stupid things, b) getting into fights with other celebrities, or c) all of the above. This did not endear me to the concept. So when I saw the quest to create a Twitter account I became very frustrated. I was therefore very relieved to be told that I only had to complete four of the six quests (ie. I could choose not to select the Twitter quest). But then I looked at the other five quests and to be completely honest, am not happy with any of them. They all involve using some sort of web site to communicate with the rest of the world. Podcasts, glogs, youtube, YUCK! So I felt sorry for myself for a few minutes and then I just decided what the hell. I am going to do all of the quests and once and for all join the 21st century. I don't promise to like any of it but I'm at least going to try and keep an open mind about all of it. So I have signed up for Twitter (my username is @cattabitha) and will be tweeting throughout the duration of the class. On to the next quest!

First Post Ever

This is my first post ever to a blog. I am not crazy about the idea of blogging...I don't tend to use the internet very often so this class will be challenging my dislike of modern technology. With that said, I am looking forward to the rest of this class and exploring popular culture as I tend to be disconnected from a lot that is going on around me. I know blogging is a huge phenomenon in our culture so I hope to explore others' blogs and figure out why they are so popular. One good thing I have discovered so far is that blogging is quite easy as is editing a post. Yay for small favors.