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The video at the link posted above argues in a “beat around the bush” sort of way the dangers of second hand smoke.  For those that aren’t aware, second hand smoke is just the smoke that lingers around smokers, finding it’s way into the lungs of those around it.  The ones that are usually affected by the smoke are people who don’t smoke in the first place, primarily small children.

A good way of how the video catches the eyes of an audience is how it resembles the hit ‘70’s show The Brady Bunch.  During the beginning and ends of the show, viewers would see the Bunch family in different squares, each square containing one person of the family.  The video utilizes that because of how popular The Brady Bunch was back in the day, and audiences like seeing stuff that they’re familiar with.

During the whole video, black borders can be seen on the left and right of the pictures being shown.  This causes the viewer to not stray their view away from what’s going on in the center of the video.  The less distractions a video can have that is trying to inform audiences of something is important.  Now what’s going on in the center shows an adult, the first time a father and the second time a mother, smoking a cigarette around their children.  The father is smoking around his sons while the mother smokes around her daughters.  These two adults blow the smoke from the cigarette towards the pictures of the children, making the children cough and gag, thus demonstrating the dangers of second hand smoke.

Each square that each person is located in is blue, a very common color.  This use of blue could have been because it doesn’t throw viewers off from the point of the video.  If one were to use fancy colors in each square, viewers could get distracted.  When the audio was on, a tune was played throughout the video, the vocalist narrating what was going on in the video, describing things that audiences couldn’t see.  The audio is important in the video, but isn’t required to get the point across, a good way of explaining the argument.  Without the audio, viewers could still see the parents smoking, the children coughing, and, at the end, a nurse putting a device on one of the sons to help him breathe.

The video didn’t really include fancy effects like panning or zooming in.  It was just a short video with a catchy tune explaining the dangers of second hand smoke, also showing the effects the smoke has on children.

Countries are classified by their specific cultures; no two countries are the same.  However, cultures of one country do blend with those of other countries, making living a much more beautiful experience.  In America, it is rare to visualize a scene that only includes American based ideas and aspects.  ”Things” from other cultures find their ways into our, Americans, everyday lives.  For example, tea is now sold in almost every store and served in every restaurant.  Tea originated in China, becoming the primary beverage in Chinese culture.  Tea came to America on ships that were importing various goods from different countries during the 18th century.  Ever since then, America has made tea part of it’s culture in many different ways from sweet tea to green tea.  This is one of the “things” that was accepted easily in American society and didn’t replace anything from our culture, but added to it.  The concern is that cultures may be easily lost because of all the blending nowadays,  like when Elvis Presley became the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.”  Elvis pretty much introduced the world to the rock ‘n roll genre, and this swept the nation, creating rock ‘n roll bands from all over the world.  This American based genre of music only added to the other genres that already existed, keeping other cultures intact and just adding to them.  As we can see, America has done its fair share of culture-blending, and other countries have impacted America as well.  The preservation of original culture is just as important as the addition of new culture in society; we do not want to forget how things once were, because wonderful memories come with it.  The originality of culture is what makes countries unique in the world.  However, cultures will change in the future and there’s nothing that can be done about it, making it hard to remember how society once was.

Persuasive games are created in order to inform/persuade the audience of the many dangers present in our current society.  They turn the learning part into a game so as to attract more audiences and to teach the idea in a fun way.  That really wasn’t the case here when it came to the game Bacteria Salad by Addicting Games.  In this game, the player must build crops so he or she can sell the produce coming from the crops.  Once the crop has been farmed, customers come by and purchase either tomatoes or lettuce, which is what the player is farming.  This seems pretty easy so far, but throughout the game, pigs will poop in your fields, terrorists will spray toxins into the crops, and weather will affect them as well.  This is where the bacteria comes in.  When these things happen, the crops become infected with various bacteria and the player must prevent customers from buying infected crops.  You can do this by getting rid of what you believe to be the infected crop and then replanting it.  This would be really easy because one could just click on the farm that owned the crops and they would all just dissapear… pretty realistic.

From my experience on playing I can honestly say that that game has no purpose…  It tries to warn you of various bacteria infections by showing that if people buy the infected vegetables, they die… or turn into ghosts… or whatever.  The game doesn’t even seem realistic, so the persuading fails for me.  The game overall was easy (I did play on the easiest difficult), but I didn’t play for long.  I just couldn’t keep interest.  The last time I played it, when I finally understood completely what to do, I made $140, which is the same as selling vegetables fourteen times.  It was hard to say if I did “well” or not because of the simplicity of the game.  If it had a challenge and I kicked it in the butt, then I would feel good about myself.  Overall, I think the game was boring and did a terrible job of getting the point across.  Maybe if there was a game where you had to smash the different bacteria before it reached certain vegetables, at the same time learning about what you’re killing, then the point would come across better and be more fun.  If the bacteria were to reach the vegetables, an image of what the salad would look like with the bacteria would be another better way of persuading kids and adults about the many dangers of bacteria in foods.  The game may only be a tad bit more fun, but the message would come across much better.

Movie History: Wikipedia or Tumblr?

In the majority when students are doing research papers, their first resource is none other than Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.  It sounds like a great idea because of all the information that Wikipedia has in store, but there’s one catch: anyone can edit the information on Wikipedia.  If it is true or false, it doesn’t matter, as long as the information is well written and there is something to back up the information.  This is why teachers and educators frown upon the idea of using Wikipedia because most of the information may not be valid.  When I searched my topic, which is movies, there wasn’t even a Wikipedia listing for movies.  I looked further and realized that my topic was under the heading of ‘film.’  While browsing through the topic on Wikipedia, I was really interested in what I was seeing, and all the info. looked legit.  There was stuff from what films were, where they started, what goes on behind the scenes, and stuff on animation.  I had my whole paper write in front of me.

When I looked on Tumblr for tags on movies or even film, all I got back were pictures, trailers of movies, and movie reviews.  Now if I were writing on how people reviewed movies and what causes them to look at films a certain way, the movie reviews would help a lot, but that isn’t what I’m interested in.  Tumblr doesn’t really help me out for my topic, and I’m not surprised.  I see Tumblr as a social network sort of thing where people express there likes and dislikes through images, quotes, sayings, or clips of video.  

If I had to choose which source that I would use between the two, I’d easily go for Wikipedia.  If I needed a picture, Tumblr will do.  But since I can’t use either of them for my paper, which isn’t really a problem, I still have the option of choosing many other sites, or books, or even, ironically, documentaries on films/movies and the history behind them.

Movies Throughout the Ages

One of the many pass times nowadays is the watching of movies; everyone’s doing it. Movies have been out for many many years now with the first “movie” being only ten seconds long.  Throughout the years, movies have advanced much more than that, and now movies are being produced at an average of an hour and a thirty minutes length, and celebrities aren’t just presidents and singers, but now actors and actresses.  With this paper, I will explore how movies became so popular and how quickly they advanced with the introduction to special effects and animation.

For the paper, the internet will be my biggest resource.  I don’t imagine there being many written peer-reviewed articles that I could use because the history on movies is just a broad topic.  If there is an encyclopedia listing on Alfred Hitchcock, one of the many producers in the beginning of movie history, or someone similar, than I won’t be hesitant to look at it.

I have a good feeling about this paper.  Probably the biggest worry in students’ eyes is that they don’t have enough words for the word count.  The history of movies has more than a hundred year span, giving me plenty to write about; some say it’s too much, but more than enough information is much better than not enough information.  The hard part, I suppose, is narrowing my topic down to the specifics so that my typing doesn’t go out of hand and I lose trace of the topic or type way too much.

How have games changed over the years and how do they affect children?  What is the age group that plays these games and are they following the ESRB required age range?  How will games of the future look like and will we soon be living in a virtual world?

This is an advertisement starring the New England Patriot’s quarterback Tom Brady, who is showing off his various new pairs of Uggs. Uggs are shoes made in Australia and are known to be very fashionable, comfortable, and expensive. The Ugg Company, or whatever you wish to call it, has introduced a new line of Uggs, Uggs for men, which in this ad is what Tom is busting out. It’s understandable why this company chose Tom Brady to show off these new kicks. Tom was last year’s football MVP, a very impressive feat for anyone in the NFL. Football fans around the world probably look up to Tom now for guidance, in hopes to be like him in anyway possible, like wearing these shows for example. Now of course not every football fan likes Tom Brady. You’d ask yourself why the Ugg company didn’t choose someone like… well… Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback for the current Super Bowl Champions the Green Bay Packers. Maybe the Ugg company chose Tom Brady because of who HE plays for, the New England Patriots. This team has the word ‘England’ in the title, targeting those who live in the northeastern part of the United States, and probably those in England itself. That’s a much bigger audience than just those in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, however, evidence shows that Tom Brady has been accused of not being a real man. I don’t see why people would make such accusations, and I also doubt that that was why the Ugg company chose Tom to advertise their new apparel. He’s just a good athlete and many people look up to him. Well for whatever reasons the Ugg company chose Tom Brady, they can be questioned. Moral of the story is, I will not be wearing these shoes. Some things just should not be changed. These shoes are too expensive, too girly (no offense), and look dreadfully too warm for the summer. These shoes would look Ugg-ly on my feet, so I’ll just stick with my Nikes.

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