First Amendment Discussion

When we discussed in depth, the First Amendment, I was very interested.  I think any topic dealing with things such as freedom of speech is worth taking time to talk about in detail.  I’m a very firm believer of personal freedom, and try and live by the philosophy that is what somebody does, doesn’t bother me then they can go ahead and do it.  Freedom of speech is something that can be easily breeched and I think I got a better understanding of exactly how that can happen.  As a safety precaution I am probably just going to be far more cautious of anything I say at anytime.

Database Presentations

The database presentations that we did during class were fairly informative.  I felt like everyone did a pretty good job on their presentations.  It was very helpful also to me since I am going to have many more research projects in school.  I was able to learn what databases people found to be useful, and which ones that people really didn’t care for.  My favorite database to use is by far JSTOR.  I was happy to see that the group that presented JSTOR also agreed that it was very beneficial.  It is also very easy to use and fairly self explanatory.

Plagiarism

Before our discussion on plagiarism, I didn’t really understand how detailed it was.  It is able to be understood, but I just didn’t know how complicated it was.  The exercises that we did definitely helped me get a grasp on it and also to help prevent myself from accidentally plagiarizing something.  I was surprised how badly I did though, but I’m pretty sure that everyone else did as bad because it wasn’t as easy to pick out the plagiarized articles as it seemed.  This is a subject I am definitely going to be following up on because there is so much to learn about.

Google

I had no idea how extensively Google tracked the websites you visit.  I don’t think that this is a good thing whatsoever, even if it is to help future searches.  I definitely don’t want people being able to view all the search phrases I have used.  It is an invasion of privacy and it really shouldn’t be supported.  However Google is a main resource of mine for research projects so I can put up with some of the methods that they use in order to operate.  I also think it is amazing that two college kids put this together and have made a fortune off of it.  I wish that could be me.

Media Discussion

The world of media is definitely one that is full of corruption and money grabbing.  Unfortunately there is nothing that can really be done about it because the people who have the money, are going to be the ones who have all the push, and are going to remain to be the ones with all the money.  I think that I just need to find a reasonable newstation that delivers mostly facts and doesn’t try to push their opinion on me.  That is about the only way I see to try and topple the huge media dominators.  But of course this will probably never happen because people like our country like this.

Discussion about Censorship

I enjoyed our conversation about what proper censorship should be.  A heated discussion is probably something that gets my attention more than anything and I want to participate in.  If the issue is a touchy one then I enjoy it even more.  Everybody had great opinions, of course I thought mine was right but that’s why it’s my opinion.  It should be left up to the parent to decide what is censored but unfortunately we can’t leave that up to the parents so until an alternative can be found, censorship will have to remain an necessary evil.

Bad Kissers

In a recent study, it was found that a bad kisser, has very little chance of getting to second base.  The study says that there is a lot of information exchanged in the moment of a kiss.  A lot of these are automatic and you may not know that you’re making them, but you do.  It says that when kissing, a good kisser let’s the other person know whether or not they are genetically compatible.  It also states a few differences between men and women when it comes to kissing.  For example, the study stated that men are more willing to have sex with someone without kissing, and that a kiss for a man is more than likely to gain access to further sexually activity.  Also women will place way more importance on kissing throughout the duration of a relationship, where men find kissing to be less important the longer the relationship lasts.

Smart Monkeys

Recently, a group of Japanese scientists put together a study to compare the short-term memory of college students to that of a chimpanzees.  The tests that they did, were based on numbers and the order in which they appeared.  The task was for them to repeat the sequences of the numbers shown.  While the chimps weren’t any more accurate necessarily than the humans, they were however noticeably quicker at completing the sequences than the humans were.  A comparison between the memory skills of older and younger humans is able to be applied directly to the nature of chimps.  The younger chimps always did better than the older ones, and normally it works the same way with humans.

Myspace Suicide

About a year ago, Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl committed suicide by hanging after receiving a message on myspace that she thought was from a boy named “Josh”.   However it was not “Josh”, it was an 18 year old girl pretending to be him in order to find out information about whether or not Megan had been talking trash about someone’s daughter.  Another girl then tapped into the account and sent some messages as Josh as well.  Her messages were sligthly hateful and were telling Megan that he didn’t want to be friends anymore and that he had heard she was mean to her friends.  After Megan figured out that the two girls were joking with her, Megan then decided to hang herself.  No charges are being pressed however, because the act that the girls committed isnt’ technically a crime.  The blame is being put on the parents because supposedly, they were able to prevent something like this from happening.

Death of Sean Taylor

On November 27th, Sean Taylor, a player for the Washington Redskins, was pronounced dead in the hospital a day after someone broke into his home and shot him once in the leg.  He died from extensive blood loss and was said to never have regained consiousness after the shooting.  There are still no leads for who the shooter might be, but a vigorous investigation is underway and hopfully justice will be served.  He was only 24 years old and a promising star of the Redskins.  The team has just played it’s first game without Taylor, and it is easy to see that he is truly missed by all his teammates.