Talk Shows

In the modern day and age we have 11 late night talk show hosts ranging from the standard 5 days a week with two personal segments, two guests, and a musical guest to once a week comprehensive study on a big issue in the style of John Oliver.

This photo features the ten main male late night talk show hosts, and there is one extremely important correlation: they're all male. That's creating a near monopoly on male dominance in late night. Recently, as in February of this year, there was an addition to late night to include a woman. Samantha Bee is a veteran of the daily show and knows how to host a show like the one she has now. In her third episode she addressed her situation of being the only female late night television host.

In the video above Samantha Bee shares the importance of having a female voice in late night, but not treating that woman's voice as any different than a man's. Having a solely male perspective on the weekly or daily news is doing a disservice to the large majority of the country that is watching.

In this segment Bee also addresses the importance of having girls that dream big and want to achieve at a young age and encouraging them to reach their full potential. However, her point explored through satire is that the working world is hostile toward women and that messed up work world is not the world she wants to send her daughters into. Using her position as a late night host, with 20 minutes a week (factoring out commercials), she is trying to draw attention to these issues in a way the current late night hosts do not.

Having the least amount of airtime out of any other late night hosts, Bee is changing the climate of late night, but in a way that isn't all about women. The particular clip displayed above relates to women, but most of her show doesn't. It talks about the same issues that the men do, which is admirable. She spins her show in a truly feminist way. A way that is equal for men and women.

Late night TV is still a male dominated world and Sam Bee is the first woman to break that barrier, but hopefully she isn't the last. She is clever and doesn't change herself in anyway to make herself more likable to a male audience. I admire her, and what she is doing with the oppourtunity she has to change the way the world gets their late night news. She pokes fun at her male dominated field with a photo that I will leave you with.

Environmentalism in the Modern World

Today, I live in a world full of meaningful posts on Facebook talking about the presidential campaign or social justice and most ironically, the environment. There's even a page that someone can like called Environmental Quotes & Sayings. Here, the page posts all sorts of inspirational quotes with a pretty background such as this one:

While it's a nice sentiment, what is posting on Facebook doing for the environment? The answer is nothing, actually it's worse than nothing. The computer power used to find and post that photo and the computer power for Facebook to keep their servers up. According to http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html a laptop computer uses 15-60 watts which while fair less than a desktop computer, still requires lots of energy. Rather than actually trying to reduce the amount of energy they use, they post these pictures in order to "spread the word".

Environmentalism in the modern era isn't what it used to be. Earth Day rolls around every April 22nd and yet nothing changes. People still litter, people still plug in their phone and laptop everyday, we still turn on the lights in our house. And while I'm not saying that we should all give up on electricity, that would take humanity back before all the progress made on social justice, but if the amount of global carbon emissions don't decrease we are headed for doomsday sooner rather than later.

According to http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/run-out-of-oil.htm we will run out of oil at some point and it is possible that when we run out we descend into total anarchy or that we create another more sustainable way of producing energy. Windmills and solar panels (see above) are good ways of harvesting energy that is a reality in the near future, but the problem is the expense of building solar panels and windmills and that overhead most people aren't willing to pay. If the government was willing to subsidize renewable energy in the same way they already subsidize oil and corn that dream could be a reality.

Posting a picture on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram does nothing directly to help the environment, and while I recognize the irony in what I'm doing by posting about the environment on my blog, which also requires computer power I hope that someone reads this and votes for a congressman or for the next president that will make the biggest change when it comes to the environment in the upcoming election. I hope that the words on the internet somehow will eventually translate to actual change in the world that I live in.

Communication

Definition:

1. 1.

   the imparting or exchanging of information or news.

   • a letter or message containing information or news.
   • the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings.
   • social contact.
2. 2.

   means of connection between people or places, in particular.

   • the means of sending or receiving information, such as telephone lines or computers.
   • the means of traveling or of transporting goods, such as roads or railroads.
   • the field of study concerned with the transmission of information by various means.

   
   
3. Communication is much more that just talking. The definition includes a successful conveying or sharing of ideas under the broader topic of imparting or exchanging of information or news. Communication becomes the broad idea of sharing.

Communication comes from the Latin: "communicare" meaning to share. This powerful 5-syllable word becomes a bridge between your thoughts to another person and his/her thoughts. Everyone communicates in one way or another. If not with words, one does it with hand gestures or with facial expressions. Even Stephen Hawking is able to communicate without moving his body. It is so essential for humans to communicate with one another just to get some feedback from others around us. 

"Connection between people or places, in particular". Another definition. The exchanging of ideas and the connection between two people is what brings people together from all over the world.

Pictorial Communication

How much can be told through a single still? What is the story that is being told?

Infinite.

          Is this the beginning of a greater story of this child's life? Is this the end of a tragedy that has a positive ending? Why is the toddler sitting down? Why is he looking up? Is it early or late fall? What part of the county is he or she in? There is no correct interpretation of what any one picture means but a million different things can be said.

          Communication is not all about a dialogue, monologue, or words in general. Those are three very important parts of communication but having a different perspective on what things mean creates a unique experience with every moment of everyone's life.

          Connections to images are unique to each person and can reveal a lot about a person, but what is their story and why does it contribute to their interpretation? A Rorschach test or an ink blot test is often used to explore the deeper meaning behind what someone is thinking. A patient's response to the ink blots on a paper reveal their story like an interpretation of a picture.

          Photographers also take on the responsibility of telling a story when they publish a photo. There is an experience behind every photo and it allows for a greater creation than just pixels on a piece of paper.

          Without story tellers, communication would be nearly impossible because there would be no common stories to tie together the individual stories of each person or each photo. Pictures give us that common story and adds to our knowledge of the greater world.

Everybody Lies

Lying is a normal part of being human. Whether it's to keep someone's feelings from being hurt, or trying to get oneself out of a bad situation, or it's simply to keep a secret, everybody lies. It's hard to strike a balance between an appropriate amount of lying and being honest which, as Billy Joel puts it "Honesty is such a lonely word./Everyone is so untrue./Honesty is hardly ever heard./And mostly what I need from you."

Truthfulness and honesty is what is craved in the modern day and age, but that's not what people really want. Everyone wants to be told they're the best thing to happen since sliced bread, which in fact, no one is. And while that is incredibly harsh, I'm just being honest and isn't that what everyone wants?

No. Of course not.

Honesty is not always the best policy. White lies are more and more accepted in today's day and age, and really, they're harmless. Telling someone they look good in a new outfit, saying that will boost his or her confidence to really look good in that outfit. Half of looking good is having the confidence to think that you actually look good.

Honesty is the best choice most of the time, but honesty is help up to be this great thing we should all strive for. The only person we need to be completely honest with is our self. And that means not putting yourself down and not building yourself up more than you are.

Everyone lies. It's part of what makes us human. As humans, we also love to hear lies because they are much more interesting than the truth.

Spreading a lie is much easier than spreading the truth. Lies are interesting and fun, whereas the truth can be humbling and hard to deal with. The brain shuts down in response to traumatic to read more about the effects of trauma on the brain click here. It shrinks the frontal cortex (where we make our decisions) to make room for a larger amygdala which stimulates the fight or flight response in the nervous system. Have more aggressive tendencies with fewer neurons to make decisions isn't the type of person that woud thrive in modern society. So as an evolutionary feature we forget the experience and try to function the way society wants us to.

It's a fine line to walk. Lying and telling the truth. However, lying isn't as sinful as perceived by society, but constantly lying isn't the answer either.

Cellphones

Ring Ring. It's your cellphone. Well, actually, nowadays it's more of a ding ding. I can't remember the last time I called someone just to talk to them without making sure they were available over text first. 

As a woman, extrovert, and quick thinker I prefer a phone call to texting but I can't call someone for ten minutes between my classes every time I want to talk to him/her. So I shoot a quick text and the conversation we're having continues. Planning is also very convenient over text because people can respond when they have time, rather than playing phone tag all day. 

Nancy O'Neill published a blog on Why People Text Instead of Talk 

In this blog she goes over several reasons (very unscientific) about why people text rather than talk. One reason that stood out to me (as a communication blogger) was that some people prefer texting because they want to have a conversation that last over several hours. 

While I hardly ever talk on the phone for more than five minutes at a time, I do see the advantage in having that constant contact with another person for a long period of time. That being said, that person is not getting your full attention for any one minute of those several hours. Send a quick text, continue what you were doing and ten minutes later check your phone and respond to another text. It's part of our common activities. 

However according to Elliot Slenk's blog titled Texting or Calling the heavy texters (50 or more a day) are also heavy on phone calls, It comes from being on phones all the time and wanting to talk to people.

Through texting, there are so many more chances for the meaning of words or sentences to be misunderstood and lead to friction between the sender and receiver. Texting does allow for more time to think though which can help eliminate any quick comments that should not be said out loud. 

As a seventeen year old girl, I am never without my cellphone. It often sits on the table during class and it is always in my hand during passing periods. I use my phone for everything. Planning, texting, sharing pictures, calling, playing candy crush, surfing the web and even my countdown until graduation. There is truly an app for everything and I take total advantage of that. I love having all the information in the world at my fingertips. That's not something anyone could've even dreamed of 50 years ago. That's what is so truly amazing.

Cellphone bridge the gap between two people far apart from each other, but puts up a wall with those who we have in real life. It's important to balance out communication in the digital world and communication in the real world.

Book Review: Unwind

The following is a review of the book Unwind by Neil Schusterman. For the Wikipedia article on this book click here.

This book is about a alternate society to our own where children are unwound. Unwound means being taken apart and used in hospitals as if an organ donor, but by choice of their parents. It's a story mainly focused around four runaways from being "harvested". The story has lots of twists and turns, eventually leading to a very detailed description of an unwinding.

The story within itself is a comment on what I assume is slavery. These children are trapped into this fate by their parents. In Conor's case, his parent believe that he's gotten in too many fights, Risa is a ward of the state and no longer able to stay in the system because of budget cuts. Remember being unwound means one is literally taken apart and used to supplement other people who need treatment in hospitals.

A very interesting part of the novel is Lev, a very religious character that is being unwound because his parents believe that 10% of everything they own should be donated to the church, including children. Lev happens to be the tenth child and because he has been told he was going to be unwound from birth he is very committed to go to the harvesting camp.

The characters also find themselves in a system very similar to the underground railroad, which hides kids that have gone AWOL. There is a movement against unwinding, just as though there was a movement against slavery.

Schusterman communicates a very compelling story full of adventure and an obviously distopian world. It is an incredible book with lots to offer for the world of communication and telling the story about slavery through this book. It is well written but at a reading level for most middle school students. The pull of an alternate world is just too strong in recent years, but "Unwind" sent itself apart from all the others.

4.8 stars.