Who Knew My Geology Class Would Make Me a Douche Bag About Nature?

After falling asleep several times while reading Lopez's article, I realized that he was just a man yearning for simpler times. Lopez makes the distinction between scholarly knowledge of land and "true" historical knowledge of land many times. He says that the "true" knowledge comes from living on the land and experiencing it first hand; whereas the scholarly knowledge consists of things like which fish live in a certain river and specific flower names which can be learned in books. His tone suggests that the former is somehow more important and better than the latter. It could be argued that to truly understand and appreciate the land one inhabits, you must possess some sort of scholarly knowledge of its' characteristics. For how can one truly appreciate the beauty of a certain Mendocino shoreline unless you understand that the layers upon layers of sediment visible in the bluff adjacent to the ocean were deposited there over millions of years. And that the reason the layers are mismatched at a certain point is because of an earthquake that took place millions of years ago. If you do not know the basic history of a place, you cannot fully appreciate it for what it is. You can appreciate it for its' beauty and picturesque qualities (even thought that's a faux paus in Lopez's mind) but without knowing "scholarly" specifics of the flora and fauna that inhabit a certain region, you are missing out on an enormous piece of historical significance.

The Home of the Only Sport Miami is Actually Good at

For my Inquiry I'm doing Goggin Ice Center, specifically the rink that the varsity team plays on. I go to most of the hockey games anyway, so I'm familiar with the rink. I'm planning on going during hockey games and other times throughout the day to see what else goes on there, what teams practice there, etc. I want to see the difference between the student section, where the band sits, and where the people who pay for tickets sit. For my research, I'm going to try to find out how hockey stadiums are designed and the atmosphere that each architect wanted to convey and see if it worked out how they wanted. I'll take pictures of the ice rink before, during and after games to see what changes and how it affects the atmosphere. I'm planning on talking to the people that go to the hockey games or go to Goggin regularly so I can hear what they think. I'm looking forward to talking to students and non-students to see how their perspectives and interests shift based on age and relation to the university.

Iced Venti Double Shot Soy Scotosis, No Whip.

Advertisers and marketers at Starbucks fully understand the concept on scotosis, and better yet, they know how to get customers to partake in it. "PR and advertising offer myopic visions that magnify the positive attributes of a commodity and disconnect the consuming experience from alternative experiences." When you walk into a Starbucks or see a commercial or Starbucks, there a hundred different things that influence your perception and chances are, not a single one of those things was put there by accident.

They make the espresso machine look overly complicated and inoperable by anyone other than a trained barista. There is a cloud of noise over the counter form the baristas yelling coded drink orders at each other, there's an espresso machine that's so loud it needs a muffler, and all the conversations that other people are having around you makes this place seem unique and popular.

The busy atmosphere and complex process that goes into making your coffe both contribute to the idea that you can't get this cup of coffee anywhere else, only someone trained could make this. And even with trained people, it takes three of them in an assembly line to do it. That idea is only reinforced by the nearly endless drink menu, and a plethora different coffee beans, each with a stamp saying where it's from and how different and unique it is from all the other coffee beans there... Just like you're unique and different from all the people there.

But even with all these forces convincing you that only Starbucks can make your coffee, there is still a portion of the wall dedicated to coffee grounds that you can buy and take home with you to make coffee just like you get it at Starbucks, but in the comfort of your own home.

But wait, it's not exactly the same unless you buy the Starbucks brand espresso maker (which conveniently has about three buttons). It's just like Mathieu said, "New and contradictory needs are created all the time." Starbucks convinces us that we can't make coffee like they do. But if we really want to, we can buy their beans, their espresso maker, their milk steamer, their mugs, and anything else that will make us think the coffee we make is the same as the one we just paid $4.65 for.

Malls and Cathedrals and Heterotopias, Oh my!

Shopping for pleasure makes the argument that the metaphor of malls being like cathedrals is false in that congregations are powerless to their beliefs and fate whereas consumers have complete control over their decisions.

I disagree.

People are manipulated by advertisements every day, and most of the time they're so good, you don't even realize it. This is called introspection and as humans, we suck at it. Nisbett & Wilson did a study in 1977 to test this, so if you don't believe me, take it up with the Ph.D.'s.

Participants were asked to use introspection to answer how they came up with an idea fabricated by the experimenters. All of them failed to report the correct stimuli AND the participants credited their idea to irrelevant and ineffective stimuli.

Good advertisers and marketers know this and they can trigger subconscious stimuli to make people think they thought of something on their own when in reality, you did not, and that's exactly how the companies want it. I could go on with how much I disagree with this passage, but I feel like I'd just be beating a dead horse with a stick so I'll move on...

Foucalt needs to learn how to edit.

Foucalt also presents a juxtaposition of heterotopias (real spaces) and utopias (imagined spaces). Utopias are not real places; they are perfected reflections of heterotopias that exist in a realm separate from our reality. The heterotopias are places that exist in the real world and serve a specific purpose to society, according to when they occur in time. The same heterotopia could have a vastly different function in one time period of a culture than if it occurred at a later time.

Heterotopias are defined by a list of characteristics: they are ubiquitous across cultures, they can affect the role of other heterotopias in a culture, they can have many meanings, they occur at a specific point in time, and they can be both exclusive and inclusive.

Foucalt said, "These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space" I found this strange because he contrasted useful space to cultural space. Is he saying that a place cannot be both? If a site is deemed cultural is it also deemed useless? Or if it is considered useful, does that mean in cannot be cultural?

If cathedrals are cultural and malls are cathedrals, are malls cultural? Are malls and cathedrals both useless? Or does it just mean that a useful space cannot be occupied by a mall or cathedral?

That's the end of my blog post, if you made it all the way through, congratulations! and here's a reward: go listen to Neon Cathedral by Macklemore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-gmGiN3Cjk