Week 13 ; Ch.11 #2

Brook J. Salder is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Florida that talks about how internet plagiarism is wrong and students shouldn't do it. She believes that it makes the students unable to be educated and the professor's comments can't influence the student to improve their work or to identify particular weaknesses. Salder write ten arguments about why internet plagiarism is the wrong thing to do. She also thinks that students whom plagiarize should face larger consequences than just failing the assignment. Russell Hunt on the other hand, a professor of English at St. Thomas University in Canada believes that internet plagiarism is a good thing. He believes that internet plagiarism encourages students on improving in their work. He says that plagiarism is okay because he believes that the way Universities have their curriculum today, in order for a student to maintain a good GPA, they are encouraged to cheat and plagiarize for help. In this situation, I believe Salder has the stronger argument because she explains how plagiarizing doesn't benefit you, how it's unfair to other students, and how it's not fair. She also talks about a solution to solving this problem, whereas Hunt doesn't talk about a solution. Hunt just states his opinions about plagiarism without any of it being solid reasoning.

Week 13 ; Ch.11 #1

Media experiences have reinforced my existing worldviews and values and challenged and expand my views in different ways. When I see something, for example, on Facebook, I usually don't believe it until I do my own research. An example of this was when one of my friends posted that Michael Duncan passed away, but I didn't believe it was true so I looked it up on Google, and it was unfortunately true. According to the text, this process helps overcome bias and narrow-mindedness because your range of media experiences is expanded. The text states that another way to interpret media messages is to carry out a critical analysis of your interpretation. This usually consists of asking questions like, "Why did it make me feel that way?" or "What is going to happen next?" after reading an article or watching a show/movie. I personally don't interpret this way as much as I do for the previous one, but I have a few times. One time I've done this was when I watched the movie Shutter Island. This movie was full of suspense, action, and mystery.Throughout the whole movie, I was confused on what was happening and the whole concept of the story, but once the movie was over, I was left speechless because it made me wonder how anyone could even think of a story line like that. I'm sure that everyone has used one of these interpretations at least once before about the media, people just don't realize it.

Week 12 ; Ch.10 #3

The section that I found most interesting in this chapter was "Common Fallacies in Advertisements". A fallacy is an error in reasoning due to misconception or presumption. This section talks about how ads usually depend on fallacies and psychological persuasion. A few example scare tactic of ads it talks about are ones that talk about losing weight, bad breath, body odor, or acne, etc. Advertisements like this make people realize the negative things about themselves that they may not have noticed before and will make them self-conscious. The ads promise a solution to the problems if you use the product. Another fallacy in ads is the fallacy of popular appeal, which states that "everyone" is using this product, including celebrities, so you should use it too. This type of advertising is usually the most effective with teenagers because they want to do what "everyone else" is doing to be "popular". Another type is snob appeal, which show people that are sexy, athletic, popular, or rich, using a certain product. A fourth type is the fallacy of appeal to inappropriate authority, which is when a celebrity promotes a product that's out of their field. For example, Britney Spears promoting Nike shoes. There are many different ways on how advertisements catch an audience's attention, so the best thing that you could do for yourself personally would be to not let it influence you into thinking negatively about yourself.

Week 12 ; Ch.10 #2

After reading Robert Liodice and Margo G. Wootan's articles, I enjoyed the fact that one person was for it, and the other was against it. Both articles talked about regulating food advertisements for children. Liodice was for the act of having advertisements because he believes that it's just the freedom of speech. On the other hand, Wootan was against having advertisements because she believes that this causes children to live unhealthy lives. She talks about how unhealthy food advertisements should be banned so that kids could live healthier lives. Wootan also goes into detail about what foods should be acceptable to be advertised and to eat. I personally think Wootan made the better argument because she gave examples of what should replace the acts now. I also think that advertisements do cause some obesity in this world because when people see a large billboard with a juicy burger on it, it usually makes them crave it afterwards. Without advertisements, businesses wouldn't be able to gain the business that they get today to be successful. Although advertisements don't make people become obese, it definitely influences them.

Week 12 ; Ch.10 #1

There are many different types of marketing strategies. Corporations use market strategies to attract customers and gain business. These types of market strategies include: consumer awareness, advertising in media, product placement, television advertising, and the SWOT model. SWOT stands for "strengths", "weaknesses", "opportunities", and "threats". I noticed SWOT was being used when I went to Pizza My Heart. The atmosphere is really comforting and unique because of the pictures and posters on the walls. Aside from the walls, there are also multiple flat screen tvs that are usually left on the sports channel. The price for their slices of pizza are pretty cheap compared to others, and they're large slices, so that makes people want to continue coming in. Also, Pizza My Heart is one of the few places that put your slice back into the oven to warm it up before serving it to you. Their soda machine is something that only a few places have, and it's different and cool because there are so many different  flavors and sodas to choose from. Something that they could work on would be if the staff were a bit friendlier.

Week 9 ; Ch. 4 #3

Something that interested me in this chapter was the probability errors. A probability error is when the probability or chance of an event is under or over estimated by a huge margin. An example given was the probability of two people in your class having the same birthday. People usually think the probably is pretty low, but in reality, in a normal class size of about 20 students the probability is around 50%. With a larger class, the probability will also increase. An insidious form of probability error is gambler's error. This is the belief that previous events affect the probability in a random event. An example of this would be if you were thinking about a certain song, and all of a sudden when you turn on the radio, that song comes on. When this event occurs, many people usually thinks it's a coincidence, but it's a freaky one. An event that happens to me a lot of the time that is similar to this is when I call my mom, and right when she answers her phone, she says it's creepy because she grabs her phone to text or call me, but I call her right before she gets the chance. I think these are both errors that occur daily in people's lives whether they realize it or not.

Week 9 ; Ch.4 #2

In the story of "Perspectives on Evaluating Evidence for the Existence of Unidentified Flying Objects",  there are three different opinions about UFOs. Edward Condon argues that the study of UFOs for the past 21 years has not come to any conclusion. He believes that since there has been no proof of UFOs, in schools, teachers shouldn't give credit to students that turn in work based on readings about them. J. Allen Hynek argues that the existence of UFOs need to be studied in a systematic scientific manner because the issue is dismissed too often. He goes on to coming up with ideas on how the existence can be proven by "comparing large groups of sightings of a particular category with a much larger population of the same category" and "Close Encounters of the Second Kind, in which the reported presence of physical evidence can yield quantitative physical data". Royston Paynter argues that there isn't solid 100% proof that aliens have set foot on Earth. He says that people can believe these alien visitations from cattle mutilations, crop circles, and alien abductions, but there isn't any proof of it. I personally believe that Paynter had the best argument because he didn't shoot the whole idea down about aliens existing like the previous two did. He said that people can believe whatever they want, but he just tells the truth about there being no evidence to support the fact that aliens do exist.