Friday, January 30, 2009

Chapter 4

It always seems as though the most uneducated people are the ones with the strongest convictions. In chapter 4 of Unspun, hoaxes, farces and fallacies are brought to light. Overall, throughout my short years on this earth, it always seems as though when people believe in something with conviction, they should be able to back it up in one way or another. Also the people who are comfortable with their beliefs are not the ones trying to change others minds. Overall this chapter can relate to many things, not just aliens or other crazy stuff. This could be used as a tool in everyday life as to how not to judge and believe everything that one hears.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Chapter 2

While reading chapter 2 of Un-spun, One of the sections really hit home for me. The section about "Bush's day of horror" was something that i remember clearly. In 2001, when 9/11 took place, I was a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania which is in western PA. The campus was about a 30 minute drive from Shanksville, Pennsylvania which is where United 93 crashed. I remember waking up for my classes hearing that the campus was on lockdown and we couldn't leave our apartments or dorms. I turned on the T.V. to try to figure out what had happened and i then found out that the U.S. was in chaos. I remember all of these "terrorist" names flying all over the T.V. and the most familiar of them was Saddam Huessein. I remember being really scarred and nervous that everything was going to come to an end. I worried for my family ( part of which works in the pentagon in D.C.) but most of all I worried for all of humanity. Since that stuff occured after 9/11, my best friend was deployed to Iraq twice now(he was a member of the Army when we were at IUP together when 9/11 happened and still is proudly serving today in Baghdad with 10 years of service to the military under his belt). I understand that the soldiers that are over there may not want to be there, but they realize that they have to. I think that when people look at the war in Iraq or any type of foreign defense, we have a tendancy to focus on whether we should be over there or not. We talk about weapons of mass destruction and nuclear warfare. Everything that goes on in the world goes on for a reason. People just need to learn not to inject fear and chaos into peoples lives and realize that everyday there is someone out there that is fighting for something for them so they can live the way that they want to. Who knows if we will ever really know what happened during all of the years. All i know is this, I will continue to keep an open mind and ears to everything around me in reguards to war, and make sure to tell my best friend that I love him and miss him everyday that i can. I'm not for or against war. I am for the troops. And people should not listen to everything that people show them on the T.V..

Friday, January 23, 2009

Smoke and MIrrors

Being decieved is something that I think we all deal with. I remember when I was a kid, the toy that I really wanted at Christmas ended up being a dud because it didn't move or act the same way as it did on T.V.. As I was reading the book UnSpun, I was disappointed to see that even today I am still being decieved. I know that sometimes I will spend a little more on things that i know really have no difference... Toilet Paper, Tylenol, Soap..., but what I wonder is if we all would stop buying all of these products that have the brand names on them, would the conglomerates go under??? I know for a fact that in the cereal manufacturing most of the cheeper "bag cereal" are made at major brand name plants. There are no differences. I know because a friend of mine, her father worked for Kelloggs. So knowing this, how much other stuff really doesn't differ. Overall, I think we are a superficial society. If we would stop thinking "what will people think when i buy this" or the idea of "I can't live without this" we would have more dollars in our wallet and "cents" in our head.