journal number...? i forget

Brendan Nave journal

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2012896747_bruce15.html\
This article is on the legalization of cannabis in the state of Washington. In Seattle they are proposing a bill that could legalize marijuana and this paper is supporting the idea. They bring up good reasons as well. The state could tax it heavily along with rules to who could buy or sell it. They compared it to alcohol and how that is regulated. I agree with this side of the idea because I think if the government taxed it they could make a lot of money off of it. But at the same time I think it would be to easy to get around the government when it comes to growing marijuana.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/osu.htm
This article is about the Ohio state coach before his final punishment was let out to the public. The issue is basically a compliance issue with the NCAA and that means rule breaking. I know because I play a sport in college they are pretty strict about selling memorabilia and exchanging things for extra benefits. I believe the NCAA is being to soft on Ohio State because improper benefit issues have been going on for a while now and a few months ago they placed USC with some serious sanctions because of a player reseving benefits and not reporting them. I think it should be taken more serious, especially as an athlete myself because I know if I were to get in trouble for situations like this it would be a lot worse.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2060454,00.html
This article is about At&t buying out T-Mobile. I really do not agree with this because it is slowly leading to a monopoly with wireless carriers. I think it is going to become something like when Comcast bought out NBC. Once one company gets so big, it will take over everything. Hopefully the senate will not let this happen but then again the government does do things that it feels is right for the economy… and we all know how that turns out.

State Patty’s Day
This state patty’s day was not a state patty’s day I want to remember. I was not able to go out because of a game that we had on Sunday. Friday night was real interesting while sitting in the dorms. We had practice till 10pm and when I had gotten back to the dorms the floor we live on smelled like alcohol. Right away I thought I was going to die having to deal with all this stuff. Every kid I saw either had blood shot eyes or could not walk down the hall without acting like a pinball between the walls. Our quad sounded like there were people in it the entire night screaming like they had won the lottery.
The next morning I had to wake u about 8:30 am for practice and walking to the locker room I passed kids walking to their apartments with cases of beer. It wasn’t even 10am and people were already getting drunk. After practice was over heading back to the dorms there was endless amounts of drunk students walking around the commons. That night I had gone out to meet some friends that were up here from my home town. I was out for no less than an hour and I saw some interesting things. Walking down college ave I saw a few bars not open. The ones that were open had lines that were way to long. A cop flipped on its lights and pull over a car. I do not know if the car was getting pulled over for a dui or what but it was the first of two cars I saw get pulled over. The second car that was pulled over, when I passed it, smelled like an abundant of weed was just smoked in it. I walked u to beaver ave right by college pizza and it looked like a dumpster. Lining the curbs up and down the street were just dirty paper plates and empty cigarette packs. The trash cans were over flowing with garbage and people just kept putting their trash on the pile. On Monday morning when I was reading the paper the paper stated how there was a drop in the amount of phone calls made to the police but the amount of activity went up. There was an increase in assaults as well as underage citations. One of my good friends from home had gotten a citation for underage drinking and public drunkenness. He was not the only one that does not go to this school to do so though. This is why I believe this holiday has just slowly been taken over by non Penn State students. There was so much green I think the Irish are sick of it and the stores down town definitely took full advantage of student minds with just loading their stores with nothing but green as they walked in. I was tempted to buy a shirt but luckily I saved my money.

Brendan Nave

I pod shuffle (apple)—this iPod is ideal for workouts. It is small enough to hide or clip onto your shorts while working out or running without it flopping all over the place. This iPod can hold up to 2GB worth of space. The idea of if the shuffle is to have your whole library as a play list. The buttons on the iPod are the basics. Play, pause, next, previous and power. It is the simplest of the iPods out there on the market.

IPod touch (apple) -- this iPod is similar to the iPhone without the talking capability. It has internet access where available. This is great for people that want more than just music. You are able to download applications like games and such to play on the iPod. When you plug the iPod into the computer all your applications automatically back up to your iTunes as well as your music. Anything bought from the iPod will be saved to the computer as if it were bought on that computer. This iPod is not very workout friendly. Unless you have an arm strap it flops around in your pocket. Even if you have the arm strap it may seem too bulky and become an annoyance.

journal 7

Brendan Nave

Journal 7

Evaluation

What I will be evaluating is the Harry Potter series. Not only was the series a set of books but the books had been turned into movies. This idea for the books was originally written on a napkin and soon turned into a worldwide phenomenon. The books had grabbed the attention of younger children and slowly started to work its way up as kids got older and more people started to hear about them. The idea of wizards and witches living in the same world as humans, though called muggles in the book, gave readers the feeling of a whole different world. The world of magic soon was made into a movie so that the imagination of the readers could come to life. It brought images to the sounds and the ideas from the book to picture that everyone could see and finally get a final image of instead of the made up one in their imagination. Not only did the books turn into movies but then the movies had been turned into a theme park at Universal Studios. This series of books could be compared to the series Twilight because of the supernatural ideas that take place but Twilight was not made into a theme park. So it seems that Harry Potter is more of an attraction to the worldwide population.

The first criteria that would be used is the imagination aspect of the books. When first starting to read, the reader can start to feel for the character. Then as the reader reads on the imagination starts to turn on and the images of wizards and witches start to cast a spell over their minds. the second criteria would be the craze for the books. When the 6^th and 7^th books were being released people would camp out of stores for the books and they would sell out in minutes. When the 7^th book came out, one book store illegally sold a few copies before the release date and had to have a court mandate that the readers not tell anyone what happens. The third criterion is the difference between the movies and the books. Because if movies run on to long the attention span of the viewer will diminish it is only logical that the whole book is summed up into about two hours. Many minor details are left out but after adding up they can add up to a whole lot of detail missed. The fourth criterion is the difference between Twilight and Harry Potter. Harry Potter had a plot of revenge but building a foundation of different twists and plots while Twilight has a plot of a Romeo and Juliet. Vampires and Werewolves’ instead of two different families. The last criterion is that Harry Potter now has a theme park. The theme park has places based out of the book and movies. The places are exact replicas of the places in the movies and are capable of interaction. People fly from all over the world to see it

Journal six

(1) I do not really know where I want to conduct any observations because my topic does not have to do with any specific place. If I had to do any observations it would be at any of the sporting events that go on around the campus and see how the students react to the players. Some react as if they are gods but then some do nothing but criticize so it could be full of both. (2) Well because of my game this weekend I was not able to get out and interview people. I already have a few people that have said they would be willing to be interviewed and along with my coach. (3) 24 out of the 29 varsity sports here have either the average or above average APR, academic progress rate, and Penn State has had 110 academic all Americans since 1993 (gopsusports.com) Penn State’s graduation success rate (GSR) is an 89 percent compared to the 78 percent average of other Division 1 institutions. 96 percent of student athletes who used up all their eligibility left school with their diplomas (live.psu.edu). (4) One thing that I was thinking about trying to do was to try and talk to the dean of admissions and see what their view and take are on athletes and how low of standards are there for athletes in admissions. Also I want to interview my athletic advisor to see all the tings athletes have to do academically to stay eligible because it is strict and there is a lot of rules.

journal 4

Brendan Nave

Journal 4

To start this blog off, first I have to say this guy ticked me off right off the bat. He interviewed to start the show off, a lady that sounds like a grump. I hated this piece, I wanted to pull my hair our while listening to this. The only part that I really had a little laugh about was when he asked the kids where they had gotten the stop sign. None of them wanted to say where they really got it until he said he did not need to use their names. Then they were all about telling where they got it. I feel like the point of this story was to bring a negative stand point on the idea of a “party school”. The school ranks among the highest in the country for its academic prestige so if you add in the partying it just makes the school that much better. The write does define issues that are in terms to make sense to the audience because I feel like this story was directed and herd by more adults and older people then the younger generation. The reasons for this story are really how the students act on a “night out” and treat the surrounding area. I think it was because whenever you hear party school, your first thought is wow it must be crazy. But in reality it is just the night life that makes the voters vote how they did. The details that were given explained how the issue affected the town surrounding the campus because of the trouble that they think it brings. I am still against this. The students are acting normal, even the lady in the beginning said she remembered when she was like that in college. She has just changed because she no longer is at that stage of life and is grumpy about it. I also liked how he had a recording of president Spanier while in a faculty conference. He said how it was not as if someone came in and examined the school, it was the students who voted on an online survey and that every online survey Penn State always comes up as number one. What I got from the ending of the show was that the investigator wanted people to realize that the school is not doing anything to change this point of view that the world has on it. She interviews president Spanier trying to get him to say that it is because of all the tailgates and alumni that he does not do anything to stop all this partying. She is definitely bias, I think. He then goes on saying that the tailgates and the 6 or 7 home games are not the issue, it is the weekends and the thirsty Thursdays that are causing the problem. Before interviewing Pres. Spanier she said that off the records staff and students say that he would not challenge the culture of the school by teaming up with the town’s people and trying to slow down the partying. I know this has to be false because for St. Patty’s day this year the town is on stricter patrol and the dorms are being patrolled more and more.

SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS

After reading what Lamott wrote about writing drafts I completely connected with it. Mentioning how people thing authors just wake up and start writing like nothing is affecting them, I feel like it is really like that though. I am one of those people that cannot start writing something even if my life depended on it. I always try and start the paper as thought I will not be doing a draft but instead just turn it in like that. I thought the part about having a “down draft” to start works as the draft where you just get things down but not in a way of actually organizing it. That would help a lot with just getting ideas that I want in the paper down on a piece of paper so I could pick and choose what and how I am going to fit it all in. Then the next draft would be when you fix it up after you had time to calm down and think about it. I tend to write a rough draft that makes sense but do work and then the entire thing has to be re-done because of all the random placed ideas. This approach for the draft for the memoir will really help out a lot. I was planning on just sitting here till I started writing something that made sense but now I can write down just the points of the story and work my way to connect them as I get to it. This way I can put my points down in a short period of them and start from the beginning so I do not confuse myself, which happens a lot. Before, in stories that had to be written as a time table, I would start writing and remember something that had happened before and would then have to find out a way to connect it in with the story that is already written down. The “up draft” would help because then I will know what points are important and what can be cut out. What I know I am going to have to have done is a review session with someone. Because I am really bad at grammar and spelling on my own, correcting something that is wrong with my paper by myself is going to be near impossible. If I had time to write this in over a month that would be so lovely because the part that she talked about going back after about a month to look at it again and do another review to it makes a lot of sense. If you try and cram things into a short time, not only do you get stressed but you always feel like its crappy work but if you give yourself a nice break like a month then you can come back fresh and review it with a clean thought process and see what really is not worth keeping and what should be kept in.