Ecological blog

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No Technology Blog

24 hours without technology has turned into an enormous inconvenience. The need that is generally placed on technology by my generation seems turns out to merely be a preference. While it is true that technology makes many things much easier it really isn't necessary. The only real problem is that it slows everything down. A little planning ahead kept me in contact with the people I needed to reach. The "need" we generally feel for technology is just us prefering instantaneous information when it is completely unnecessary.

24 hours w/o tech

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One Challenge

The biggest challenge that will face everyone in the next four years is the economy. This same problem has persisted in the American economy for the past 80 years. The market always builds itself to an unsustainable level based on the credit that should never have been extended. It happened during the Great Depression with the stockmarket and its happening now with the realestate market. This is going to harm any chance I and any one else has in purchasing a home or getting an apartment. The only way to correct this flaw in the credit market is to influence the lenders to restrict their loans without directly regulating it. If they are regulated then at the first instance of deregulation they get greedy and plunge us into this same situation. The only solution to correct the economy is to educate lenders and borrowers to only participate in reasonable ventures, not longshots in hope of winning the lottery.

Direction for second paper

The direction I'm takin in this paper is that the main character in GTA: Libert City Stories is the most ethical character in the game. I'm probably going to rely heavily on philosophers like Nietzche in order to define ethical behavior in way that is agreeable to my thesis.

Video Game Articles

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040121/Feature1.asp
"What Video Games Can teach Us"
Video games have many beneficial effects. They can teach players to multitask and create complex stategies. This can be coupled with the fact that in order to play a vast majority of games the player must have basic reading comprehension. By playing, young children are reinforcing their ability to read and understand the text because most games require the player to take what is displayed on the screen and perform tasks based on it. And as all of this happens, it usually requires players to develop better hand eye coordination in order to play and interact with the virtual world.

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040114/Feature1.asp
"The Violent Side of Video Games"
There is a key problem with the idea that video games cause violence. Technically there is no proof that video game violence causes real life violence. The only thing that can be said is that there is correlation between video game violence and real life violence. Correlation is not proof of anything. The correlation may simply mean that the violent people like violent games. The only real way this could be proved would be with documented nonviolent people being subjected to long term play until they became violent, but this would be extremely unethical. So any speculation on a causal relationship is completely unjustifiable.

Thesis/Outline RED

Thesis:
While both games are intended to expose immoral corporate practices, the McDonald's game is far more effective.

Outline:
1:Intro to paper
2:Body of the work

• The visual appearance of the two games.
• The point of view it takes
• The actual content each game

How they present factual information about companies

• The gameplay

3:Closing of argument

How these play into "ethos", "pathos", and "logos."

Airport Security-RED

"Airport Security" seems to be a persuasive game intended to reject current security practices in many airports. It appeals to the logos of the player by showing how arbitrarily the banned items can change. They can range from the possibly nefarious, like a container of liquid, to the completely inocuous, like the plush doll. The game also makes an apeal to the pathos of the player by being extremely frustrating. It constantly changes the rules of the game and doesn't allow the player to give items back, ensuring eventual failure. The combination of the pointless item bans and the severe frustration factor are all intended to show flaws, severely embellished ones at that, in the current airport security system.

"Stop the Pork"

This game is an persuasive game that tries to use humor and information to influence political allignment of the player. The first thing the player is comfronted with is the absurdity and simplicity of the McCain logo shooting the word "Veto" at floating pigs. After each level the player is then given facts about legislative spending supported by the different presidential candidates. The game sets the users up with the ease of play then hits them with a political message. It tries to use logos to convince the players by using facts and statistics of the different spending patterns of the candidates to vote for McCain based on their pocketbooks.

Darfur Is Dying- Red

"Darfur Is Dying" is a perfect example of an persuasive game using rhetoric. It uses pathos to create shock and outrage towards the situation in Darfur. When the game first begins the player is told to pick a character, and when he or she tries to pick the adult male it forces them to choose the female or one of the children. This is obviously intended to add to the horror of the situation because if the player loses they must deal with the capture of a young child or woman while it would be less horrifying if an adult man who many would say would be more capable of defending himself against attacks. As the game progresses the player prompted to send messages to politicians or demonstrate on campus. The horror is intended to force political action on the part of the player based on emotion.