Curation Progress #2

So far, my curation is going well, I've been finding some really interesting things. One of my favorite things I found was a comedy skit by Dane Cook which nicely illustrates the battle between beliefs. Dane Cook: Atheist

What I plan to do with my next couple of posts is to branch outside of Judaism, Catholicism and Atheism and explore the beliefs of other religions and what their theories are. I think my next post might be about the Egyptians and their afterlife process, that might be pretty interesting. Besides, I've already got some information on that. 

So far, I think everything is working well, this isn't too difficult since I'm interested in the topic. I love using blogger, its made this project run very smoothly and there's nothing I would change at this given point. 

Curation Progress #1

At the beginning of this project, called a "Curation" I was confused. I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to be doing or what I should even talk about.

Yesterday in class, however, I finally got the ball rolling. I chose the topic "Where we go after death" and it really fascinates me. Since it's something I'm interested in, I've come to the conclusion that this project might actually be fun!

I started a new blog page called "Where's Purgatory?" where I talk about all the different theories of where we may end up after this life.

My first post was about the typical and well-known theory of Heaven and Hell. But as I dig deeper I hope I will be able to find many more complex theories. I was also thinking that maybe I could do fun posts as well, not relating to just theories, but stories that had affected me.

I want to post stories that show why I believe in the theory I believe in, but those will obviously just be for fun. After all, even though it's about different theories, it's also about the supernatural.

Best of the Week- Exit Through the Gift shop

   

Throughout our course in humanities this semester, we have touched on various topics, like love and poetry and lyrical art, but one thing that really caught my attention was this movie we watched called, "Exit Through the Gift Shop".

Now I don't want to say that it fascinated only because it was a movie and not a lecture, although that was half of it... It caught my attention because this movie is about a different kind of art that we see everywhere, on trains, bridges, buildings. The movie was about graffiti.



This movie really focused on a man that goes by the name Banksy, his art work appears everywhere, yet no one has ever seen his face, not even in the movie! In the movie, his face is always blurred and his voice was changed to protect him from being arrested for vandalizing various buildings across London.

What I would like to know is, if they had found out who he was, would they really arrest him? I mean, he's practically a trademark now, they have his art on mugs and they have little souvenirs that have his name written all over it!

This is because his graffiti is art. It has powerful messages and meaning and it's all so beautifully crafted. I really enjoyed watching this film because I have always looked at graffiti as vandalism and as a crime, but now I see it differently, not all graffiti is trash, sometimes, it's just an artist trying to get his message out there and wants to show the world his talent and expression. Sometimes they just want to leave their mark on this world.

Below are various pieces of art if you are unfamiliar with Banksy.

Metacognition: the Mashup Process

Well, Our most recent project in my Humanities class was something called a "Mashup".

I've never heard of such a project until now, though many of my classmates have participated in one last year.

A Mashup is a project where you take a whole bunch of different quotes all relating to one topic, and the challenge is to make it sound like one voice in conversation.

For my mashup, I decided to do the topic of "Love" and what it means to me and all the different voices in the world who I used in part of my project. Some of the people I used ranged from William Shakespeare to Macklemore.

At first, understanding exactly what I had to do was a challenge, but once I got started it was easy to just keep going.

I really enjoyed this project because it really helped me dig deeper into my thought process about what I thought Love was to what it really meant.

An inconvenient Truth: Time Never Stops.

Time never stops for anyone. I hate that. 

But, it's not even the fact that it doesn't stop that bothers me the most. What bothers me the most is that it doesn't feel like a light jog; It feels like a sprint. 

It's like, one day you're six years old and you're having a great time and it feels like this is going to be your life forever, then before you know it you're getting ready to go off to college.

I wish time moved more slowly, I wish I actually had time to smell the roses.

In class a few weeks ago, we were talking about something called entropy, which is when someone goes to a perfect state to big jumbled mess, or when something simply just gets older. For example, the rust on this clock is entropy.

I feel like entropy is taking over my life, I just keep getting older and older and things are getting way more complicated. Life gets complicated.

When you're little, everything is done for you, your under the comfort of your parents roof and they take care of you and your needs... Everything is perfect.

As we get older, you become more and more responsible for things, you have school, you have work, you have a social life, you're trying to save money for college and dances and activities... It gets messy and I usually just end up with a massive headache.

However, in some ways, entropy can be a beautiful thing too. Without it, there wouldn't be character to life, nothing interesting, nothing to learn from or observe.

Time plays the biggest part in entropy, but sometimes it's hard to keep up the pace. I need to slow down; life needs to slow down, time needs to slow down.

Blogging Around: Brittany and Annie E.

Brittany: Brittany, I see you've gotten a lot of responses to this post- as you should!! This was a great post and it was very relate-able, I think about going away all the time and it scares me constantly. "Good-byes" always seem to make their way into my head and it always puts a damper on my day. Your post got me thinking of new ways to handle the hard good-byes and it shed a little light on the subject. I loved this a lot!


Annie: Annie, I love this post and I agree 100%. I believe technology has given us power we don't know how to handle. We have become socially awkward and we abuse technology in a number of ways. Social websites are for staying in touch to those out of reach- not stalking our neighbors.great post, I hope we learn to better use technology in the future!

Change of Mind: The Ugly House Down the Street.

So, for the past four years of my life, I have gone to Glenbrook South High School. Beautiful school, really. However, just down the road of GBS there is this house.. It's completely made of different colored tiles that look as if they belong on the bathroom floor, the proportions are off and the shape of the house looks disfigured.

To say the least, I hate that house.

I like houses that look like the average American house. White pick-it fence, wrap around porch with a swing, a nice big year with an American flag flying high on the front lawn. Something like this: 

The house I'm talking about now is just the complete opposite. I think it's a total disaster.

So, the other day in class, Mr. Allen was talking about what is called "Modern" and "Postmodernism". Modernism is my white pick-it house, it's what's always been there, it's normal. Postmodernism is deep, it has different meanings and perspectives.

After learning and seeing different examples of modern and postmodern building I'm starting to understand the ugly house down the street a little bit more, but I still hate it. I get that it's supposed to be out there and edgy but I'd much rather stay in my cute little all-american house.

My change in mind is that I will tolerate the existence of that house, but I personally would never live in it, would you?

It Matters: Human Rights

So, here we are again- another blog post. What I want to talk about today is equality. As we begin to kick off the start of Black History Month, Mr. Allen had us read the letter that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote while he was in jail explaining why all people of different color, sexuality, and race deserve to be treated as equals.

Well, even though we aren't dealing with segregation to the same extent, we are still dealing with discrimination. What I'm really talking about is the discrimination against homosexuals in our society. Today, we are still struggling with the fact that homosexuals are being denied the rights of legally being married and joining the boy scouts- ect.

Well, actually as I'm writing this I'm watching the channel 7 news at 5:30 and it was literally just said as I'm typing this that the boy scouts just lifted the ban of gays in their program, which is great because now my mom will let us buy their popcorn again!!

As some may know, I have a gay brother. He's my best friend and honestly one of the greatest people you will ever meet. What really kills me though is that society isn't fully considering him a human... because if they did he would have all his born-rights.

(side note, this is me and my brother Colin at the Pride Parade in Boystown, kind of an in-the-moment shot of when I found him! ---->)  

Sure people are all like, "Yeah I totally understand, they SHOULD have their right" but then they turn around and use the word "Faggot" as a discriminatory comment.

Now, we aren't the kind of people who will call someone out for maybe saying the word "faggot" or anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect other people. The way people treat homosexuals, the way society treats my brother, isn't right.

Just as the African Americans who battled for their civil rights, so are these amazing people. This is a huge issue in society but thankfully it is slowly but surly bringing justice to the surface. Now-a-days, more and more of society is accepting not only gays in society but are also supporting gay marriage!

This is an important topic and not to be over-looked, we need to fight discrimination and aim for equality for all people of the United States.