Finding My Tweeps

So for this quest I decided to try to diversify the subjects in which the people I was following were experts. I ended up deciding on Taylor Mali, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
The first of these, Taylor Mali, is a writer. More specifically he is a slam poet. He is one of the best known contemporary slam poets, mostly because of the circulation of his well known poem "What Teachers Make". I chose him as an expert because of his leading position in the area of poetry. He has won four National Poetry Slams and was in the final round two other times. He studied with the Royal Shakespeare Academy at Oxford  and taught English, history, and math for nine years. He knows his way around a stage, around a poem, and around the English language.
The second, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, is an astrophysicist, author, and has appeared on PBS's NOVA, and NOVA scienceNOW. I first knew him as the guy with the show about the stars, and came to recognize him as he hosted shows about the origins of the universe and about why Pluto was not a planet. Most recently he has been recognized as the son of a bitch who got James Cameron to change the star field in Titanic for its re-release in 3D to be accurate for what Rose would have seen.
These two men are experts in fields that are almost complete opposites. Somehow, however, they seem to make sense together. Both are concerned with furthering knowledge and education of the general public, they just differ on their preferred audiences and their preferred means of distribution. This should be interesting, to say the least.

Spring Break

I love Dr. Seuss books!

This is how my spring break is going. And that's pretty much all I have to say.

*Note: If you can name the 7 pop culture references in this post, I will give you a cyber cookie ;)

Reading Quest 1

I had a lot of difficulty with this, as I found everything we read very understandable. It was interesting, sure, and I quite enjoyed the subject, but I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to discuss further. I I suppose it would've been interesting to further explore successful learning styles, as demonstracted  by AI in chapter two, section two. The fact that many people don't think of mistakes as productive is an interesting commentary on society and how we currently define learning versus what has been shown to be successful.

That there, above, is what I submitted (late) and now I'm going to talk about it.

I've been studying psychology for two and a half years, and what interests me is far more in the psychology side of the book than the culture, though I suppose culture is what dictates how we expect to learn. One of the studies in the book talks about how when a child is told they are smart instead of a hard worker, they go on to fail hard and harder, as they become discouraged when they realize smarts can't help them through everything. It talked about how on the other side, children who were told that they had tried really hard were much more successful and productive. This intrigues me, as the children who work hard because they're told that's what they're good at (hard work) accept mistakes much more easily than children who expect themselves to be smart and understand. As the book showed, mistakes are the things that actually end up teaching us the most, so the fact that teachers and parents would partake in any activity shown to close children to the helpfulness of messing up seems wrong. I believe that the only proper course of action would be to spread that information as far and wide as possible, so as to allow as many children as possible to be taught that mistakes are not just okay, but a great thing. It occurs to me that people with high IQs, who were provably book smart would have more difficulty instinctively grasping the concept that messing up is good. Kids who are sent out into the world to fall down and drop things and break windows, it would seem, would grasp this much more readily, as they have the stories to show that the times they messed up were the ones they remembered and learned the most from. In contemporary society, with video games, this seems even more true. Kids play games and explore and the way many games go, their character dies and dies and dies and they learn where to go, what to do, what to avoid, and how to play. If this concept were more readily accepted and then they were encouraged to apply it to daily situations, maybe learning curves would rise. I don't know. It's an interesting thought. 

Anyway.....

Then & Now

I spoke with my father (46) about his college years and early adulthood. He identified quite a range of aspects of the 80s in Midwestern America.

(THEN) My family is very into music, so the first thing he brought up was that the early 80s were really the start of dance club music. He said that every bar had at least a small 10x10 dance floor, and many were larger. There was always good dance music playing.

(NOW) It seems that a parallel would be the rave trend now. Though not all bars offer popular, dance-able music, or even a place to dance is there is music, raves are very popular. People gather together in usually fairly packed places and listen to very loud music that often would fall under remixed, or electronica genres.

(THEN) Most people aren't completely innocent in college, and my father doesn't claim he was. He actually identified cocaine as the party drug of choice when he was in college. He said that one of his friends told him "If you're ever given the opportunity, you should definitely try it."

(NOW) In a parallel, there is a very open feelings towards many drugs now. Most obviously is the acceptance and encouragement of  legalization of marijuana. This is actually very similar to the feelings in the 60s and 70s. It has actually become so popular that there are memes based solely on the culture of marijuana.

(THEN) Dad mentioned that the way to travel on campus was really on moped. It was The Thing to have. Now this may not seem much like pop culture, but what it came down to was expectations. College students claimed this form of transportation and it became almost expected for students to travel by moped (in Midwestern america).

(NOW) Now there isn't really an expected form of transportation, but almost as widely expected is familiarity with internet humor, specifically memes. To tie this with the earlier mention of memes and stoner culture, here's one meme:

but there are hundreds of memes, mostly dedicated to different aspects of humor. In my experience they naturally fall into the culture of my generation, but my parents don't really understand them, or why we take them and drag out jokes all from the same vein on that meme.

(THEN) Fashion doesn't seem to have changed too much, especially if you compare the two pictures I'll post here. It was expected for college students to wear a preppy style look. Izod was apparently huge, and Polo was just getting started. My dad mentioned that Polo was exceptionally expensive. My mom chipped in that a button up with a sweater was just what girls wore. We went through their yearbook, actually, and found only a couple girls who were not in that combo.

 (NOW) Not much has changed. Preppy is still considered a totally normal and acceptable look. Now, however, some other looks have established themselves as well. The current concept of "hipsters" isn't new, but it seems as though they are getting more attention and becoming strangely passe. If you aren't called a hipster at one point or another then you're probably missing quite a bit of the current fashion. Funnily enough, everyone hates hipsters. Especially hipsters.

(THEN) MADONNA. MICHAEL JACKSON. Need I say more? They ruled the music scene and everyone knew them. I would venture to say that they were more widely known and loved than Lady Gaga.

(NOW) I could go with music here, to complete the parallels, but I don't want to. I want to talk about the return of children's books. Currently children's books are as popular with adults as children, with the Harry Potter books having led the revolution. The Twilight books followed, and currently the Hunger Games books are sweeping the nation with children and parents alike being pulled in.

Each of these sets is a different aspect of popular culture, because they were the water that the fish of the time were swimming in. They are so deeply ingrained, that it took me almost an hour to figure out everything I wanted to know from my father for this assignment. These are the things we complain will complain about to our children when their culture has taken over, or will celebrate the disappearance of when a new fad or trend hits. So much of this is considered latent information, and knowledge of it is just expected and taken for granted. If you don't know about and understand these things then you are out of the loop of everything, and if you do then it's just accepted, not exceptional. Even the political views are almost passe now. In my peer group, if you don't support the legalization of marijuana and support gay rights, then you're the outsider. This expansion of expectations is slightly disconcerting, and endlessly interesting.

Logos

Thought this would be relevant: A Five Year Old Analyzes Logos

Cinch

Podcasting. A poem by Big Poppa E

Blogging

My usual blogging service is broken.
I'm so upset.
But Glee.