My Philosophy class

Considering that we only have a free choice blog every other week, there are certainly a few different topics that I could rant about this week. Cold weather, potholes, and bad drivers in snowy weather are definitely finalists, but I decided to rave about something that we are doing in one of my other classes.

In my Philosophy 112 class, we watched a movie, and then each of us had to give an oral presentation about a different aspect from the movie. The class is Comparative Religion, so there were many different types of religious themes in the movie. The presentation would count as our Midterm. So, each of us had to reach into an envelope, and pick out a question at random. We were given the option to trade questions with other classmates if we chose.

It has been very interesting watching all of the presentations the last few days, especially since mine has already been done. I like to see what each person’s take on the movie is, and what type of creativity they may bring to the class. I chose to do a Powerpoint, one girl used cut-out pictures of the characters to illustrate her point, and even one made a video of herself at home and played it for the class. Our instructor has been very liberal about how they must be structured. Most have simply used notes and given a speech, but everyone has really done a great job.

This is the way that I feel college level learning should be. It should be about the experience of learning. Too often, a class will be about memorizing information, and taking tests. However, the classes we will remember will be the ones where we work outside the box, and do something different. Hopefully, the majority of my classes will be like this one.

 

Death by Hyperbole

As I began to look for an article for my Week #5 text response blog, I stumbled across an article entitled “Powerpoint: Killer App?” It was written by Ruth Marcus, who, according to our text, writes for The Washington Post editorial board. I, literally, read it with my mouth wide open. She makes the contention that Powerpoint software is so boring and mundane that people using and listening to it have become lazy and unaware of what they are hearing. She actually uses the terms soul-sapping and torture to make a connection to the ineffectiveness of Powerpoint (Argument! 274-275). Have you ever heard of the phrase “Don’t shoot the messenger?” This is a case of shooting the messenger’s software.

If a person is so bored during a business meeting or an academic presentation that they miss the message, then maybe the speaker needs to reconsider their approach. Lecturers have struggled with how to engage the audience for ages. I can assure you that people have missed important information for years because of monotone voices and ineffective visuals. Couldn’t you make the same argument a few years ago with dry-erase markers and white boards? What about all the teachers in the 1980’s who seemed to have an overhead projector attached to their hip?

I agree that Powerpoint could make a presenter less than exciting, but it could also be harnessed by a creative-type personality. It has the capability to be used to create visuals and disseminate information in a way that can engage an audience. It is the responsibility of the person giving the instruction to make it informative and intriguing. Don’t lay the blame at the feet of the visual aid, that criticism should be directed at the penny loafers of a tedious and lackadaisical speaker.  

Powerball changes

As I write this week’s blog entry, the Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night is $284 million dollars. It may even climb higher than that considering how many tickets will be sold in the last few hours. That is an incredible amount of money that would change anyone’s life, and hopefully it will be split among a few different winning ticket holders. But maybe not, it could be simply one ticket holder that receives all of that money.

The Powerball rules currently state that someone match 5 numbers from a pool of numbers from 1 to 59, and also match one Powerball from a separate pool of numbers from 1 to 35. This is obviously very rare, and the current odds to match all 5 plus the Powerball are 1 in 175 million. The reason the jackpot is so large is because no one has achieved this in the last 13 drawings.

So, my opinion is: why not change the rules a little when the jackpot gets that big? A jackpot over $200 million is an incredible sum of money for only one person. It doesn’t have to turn someone into a mogul, and a lower jackpot can still set a person up for many years to come. After all, this is money that you won from luck. It’s not exactly as though you earned it.

My proposal is to drop the Powerball requirement from the first drawing that reaches $250 million dollars. Any and all players who match 5 numbers in the next drawing would split the jackpot. For example, in Saturday’s $250 million drawing, 10 players matched 5 numbers, but failed to match the Powerball. That means under my proposal, those 10 people would have split $250 million, and receive $25 million apiece. That is certainly a large amount of money for anyone, and it could benefit at least 10 potential families.

I understand that lottery officials may resist this type of change because they receive considerable publicity from the large jackpots, but 10 or more millionaires could generate quite the buzz as well. Saturday’s winners were from California, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas. That could generate substantial goodwill in all the areas where the winners reside. I just feel that in these economic times it would show great compassion to sacrifice the huge jackpot to have more people benefit from the money.

Not thin? Okay, you're fat!

This blog post is written in response to the article “Social Lubricant: How a Marketing Campaign Became the Catalyst for a Societal Debate” by Rob Walker. It focuses on some advertisements by Dove that feature the Dove Girls, who are women of all shapes and sizes photographed in their underwear. It has created chatter in the media, and all because they are using average and curvy women.

Mr. Walker does an admirable job attempting to explain Dove’s motivation for the campaign, and why it is a refreshing sight. He refrains from calling it a publicity stunt. He and I agree that most Americans have grown tired of seeing nothing but too skinny models gracing the covers of fashion magazines, while we check-out at the local grocery store.

My problem with his assessment is the use of the word “fat”. Now, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know that the use of the fat joke is, and probably always will be acceptable in American society. However, in a story about a company using normal, everyday women in their ads, I find its use to be a bit classless. Even the first word of the story is fat.  I know that he only uses it twice, but I feel that the whole article could have been written without it. At one point, he even mentions that maybe their next move should “to show up in a Burger King ad, enjoying an Enormous Omelet Sandwich.”  Maybe, it could be my own personal struggles with weight loss that makes me so sensitive to the subject. But this could be a story about the beauty in the common woman, but instead, he turns it into an article about “fat” girls.

Now we know what his opinion of a normal woman is