Technology Bad?

Education, just like our food, is great, but we always want it to be instantly gratifying- even a bit too much, when it shouldn't be. (I'm heading towards a Mickie D's direction)
We now commonly use I-pods or play music while we study. There is nothing wrong with that but that's how some people really enjoy studying. Not to say studying should not be fun but that's just a little observation to show how education has changed from 100 years ago to now. The black chalkboard is still used but computers are now becoming a standard in the classroom as well. Talking to classmates during class is something that has been going on for ages. Now it can go on for an unlimited amount of time thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook. This is a double-edged sword if one does not have self control. I'll admit Facebook has saved me when I have asked for advice and help finishing an assignment/surveying people, but I do indulge in the games and conversation sometimes. I'll post up comments about a book I read in high school, sometimes even over around 300 characters! I could have done a blog instead! My major is computer science, so I really on this advancing technology to one day provide me with a job and all those goodies. I can't be neutral on a moving train.

"Public" Universities have many students in their classrooms. I guess that's why they're considered public; they're also expensive. An education is worth it of course. A good setting would have around 18 students tops; though that's pretty hard to ask for throughout the whole school. Fortunately for me, I do have a classroom that big and that is this one my writ2ACE Class, and in this final blog I'm giving a shot out to everyone that made it possible, Thanks!

Research On Podcast: East Los

My podcast is being done on my favorite topic: East Los!
Doing my podcast on East Los Angeles, required me to ask some of former teammates, friends who still reside in East Los Angeles, and check the LA Times on any info on my hometown. I really like it, because the connotation east Los Angeles gets from the media and some movies isn't positive, yet we've had an Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest boxers during their time, Oscar De La Hoya. The "Golden Boy" (De La Hoya) went to my high school and had my biology teacher, who was the coordinator of my Small learning community (that means I was around the same students for 4 years; we had the top classes in our school.) Our teacher described Oscar de la Hoya as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, maybe from all the hits he took. Either way, our community has spawned hope, because of people like him. The institution that does so is James A. Garfield High School (as I have said before in previous blogs). I really am zealous about my school and community.





What I found out on my research was that The East Los Angeles Metro Gold Line was now open. I remember that projected started back in my junior year. It caused a lot of problems: people and cars couldn't reach businesses. This complicated it for them and losses were recorded. I heard from a person during a bus ride (not too credible) that it had already opened before November 6th but that the metro was loosing power as it went on. There was a problem on the way it was built but it was quickly addressed. That's the biggest news I found. Everything else pretty much remains local, like how the high school sport teams are doing. Maybe during my visit back I’ll make some positive news show up! haha

Research Paper

On music changing; evolving music changes.. well lets see.. My cousin used to listen to Eminem, then he started listening to Linkin Park, then he listend to Rob Zombie, Ozzy Osborne. From there he moved on to slipknot. After slipknot he moved onto some other hardcore metal stuff. All of a sudden i hear he listens to rancheras and corridos (which is like Mexican ghetto music).






This is an evolving music change that just happened perhaps spontaneously or it had to do with his gender and ethnicity. I would say gender because I believe men can take more pride in liking corridos as opposed to girls. Ethnicity because to be into corridos, chances are likely that you are Mexican. After doing some research, I found out that there has not been many similar inquires done about this; doing this survey and experiment was going to be harder than I thought.

The only similar research was on elementary kids in 1979, and he redo for it in 2008. They both showed that the kids were into rock in the 70's and hiphop more now in days. This was not as useful as i hoped it would be, so my paper ended up looking a bit whack.
I read more and I found a lot of research papers with a common reference that i could not successfully find. It was a paper on old people's music tastes. A high percentage of old people like music that was popular when they were in their "prime", or just younger years; the years i focused in on my research paper. The difference is that i saw the changes within those years. I made an excell chart and saw that most people have changes, only a few stay constant. One person that stayed constant was into Pop music, and the other two were into Alternative Rock. What does this mean? I don't know, we need more research on this just to know these things..and probably profit-of of them one day.

Output Levels of Commercially Available Portable Compact Disc Players and the Potential Risk to Hearing.

Writing research papers has a procedure. I thought it was more tedious as high school made it seem. It’s not that bad actually, you first go out, mess around with people, get samples, come back, do some fun charts and algorithm style thinking (the kind you do when you program and computer science related activities [which I think are fun] ).. then you do that paper which is not as bad as it sounds. You introduce the thing (Picture star wars style intro), then you talk about what you did, who you mingled’ with, how you got info, who you spoke to, almost like telling a narrative but not as interesting. After that you have the discussion which is rambling about what you did, (by now you want to defend your case and you should be convinced that what you’re doing is worth it and beneficial somehow). Then you conclude it, and work on the abstract and stick it to the front. Yups. I can do one on something like “How Do you Like to Eat Hot Cheetos”. I have a lot of work this weekend; midterms and most importantly this writing paper. I have to get it done and Ace it so I can have an decent gpa, because in my math class.. well I’ve passed it 4 times but here in the university it’s different for some odd reason. I should do a survey and see the performance on people who also passed calc in high school and how they are doing now. Anyways, today is the day of the East Los Angeles Classic, the biggest High School Rivalry west of the Mississippi river. ( We beat Texas at this?) This rivalry has gone for many years and attracts about 30,000 fans; not counting how many view this game on television. I had the honor of playing this game, tho on the JV level (I had to leave to football to pick up my grades and to focus and have a good junior year that led to my presence in this class). True story.

Ipods

That nap was not a small nap :|
I-pods, i have good memories with them, i got mine when I was a 10th grader playing Football at my high school. At the time, everyone in the team started getting one to listen to them as a pre-game ritual, to get pumped up. I went with the crowd and got my I-pod the weekend of the "Classic" (the big rivalry game between Garfield and Roosevelt High School). I listened to mine hoping a victory in our semi-last game as we were still undefeated.
Other Ipods came out, newer versions with video, and whatnot but I decided to keep mine. I didn’t have a job so my parents bought me something that was supposed to only last me a year or two? Nah. I decided to upgrade mine, so I looked online for a “Jet Set Radio” style approach to the headsets. On ebay I found a a headset for the Nano second Generation and thought it was a great investment. It surely was. I had good times with that headset, and still do. Life was made easier, wireless, battery less and most importantly, stylish. I would bump my music loud with them before a cross country meet. I would run and sprint downhill listening to some rise against. A photographer took a neat picture of me warming up for the city finals meet; in it, a great advertisement for the headset product. Too bad it’s not well known, and people might be “ehh?” at first. I haven’t listened to my ipod much at all.. maybe when I workout I do. Since I don’t listen to it much, I can sorta say I don’t have to worry about those I-pod issues much (the ear damadge ones). Anyways.. THUG LIFE I’m sleepy.

Exposure to Degrading Versus Nondegrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior Among Youth

First of all I would like to say, FML, I should of done this on Thursday. Anyways, we did had in interesting conversation in class in regards to music with explicit lyrics. We used some inductive reasoning, that helped us see a the point of view of parents better; censoring music is done for a reason other than just to regulate and flex power. Using the chat room in class, also helps people express themselves without feeling too much pressure. That’s mainly from the ability to slowly have an output of words at a pace determined by the person typing.
From the reading, I saw a good point that was brought up. That, perhaps people who are sexually active and whatnot are the ones who mainly listen to degrading music, thus deviating the correlation of those who listen to the music and are not active. Hopefully that made sense.
I would be saying that this generation is pushing it to the extremes and making it harder for the next generation to “rebel” against the standards of this one (unless it goes back to classical/ or country music), but even in the 50’s with artists like Little Richard, there were some pretty explicit lyrics going on. Although he didn’t get the songs published like that, there was still that mentality so not much has changed.
My personal opinion can be shaped by the last comment I hear, I don’t have a 100% firm side, but I will say that it depends on who hears the music. There was this little point made that people who breed within the group of younger, poorer people, are more bound to listen to this music and perhaps repeat the same thing, of breeding while poor, which probably is determined by genetics, and enlarging that pool of people. This sounds like eugenics but it makes sense in my personal opinion.

David Ritz - Last Days of Brother Ray

The more you know, the more you don’t know. That’s what I’ve been getting out of my class lately. This is true especially in the genre of blues. I thought Ray Charles was a weak pitied figure who wrote some music and was admired just because he was blind. I didn’t know he was a dominant figure who owned his own music and gave a rat’s ass about what people thought about him when he was rewriting “Church Music”. He’s a character for the books for sure, and he proved it –and I read. Teachers always knew trivial facts about some characters randomly, and they all had to go through college, well if I ever become a teacher, I already know where to start. He speaks like my dad would sometimes; I start to get the impression that if I go back in time, it wouldn’t be too foreign to today.